Man's Watch Chain c. 1939

Irene Lawson made this drawing of a watch chain, we don't know when or with what. But look at how the artist has translated the three-dimensional, tactile object into a flat image. The delicate hatching and the muted colors are so different from the gleaming metal of an actual watch chain. The drawing has a muted, ghostly quality; it's like a memory or a relic. I wonder what the artist was thinking about as she drew it. Was she thinking about the person who owned the chain? Was she thinking about the passage of time? Was she thinking about mortality? The chain itself is rendered with incredible detail, but the background is left blank. This emphasizes the object's isolation, its separation from the world. In a way, it reminds me of some of Giorgio Morandi's still life paintings, those isolated arrangements of bottles and jars. Like Morandi, Lawson finds a kind of quiet beauty in the everyday. What do you think?