Pitcher 1938

Francis Law Durand made this watercolor of a pitcher, sometime between 1870 and 1920. It has a kind of glowing earthiness, doesn’t it? I can almost imagine Durand carefully mixing each shade of brown, layering them on the page, and how each stroke must have felt. When I look at this, I think about Durand's patience, gently coaxing the pitcher's form out of the flat paper. Those dark smudges, like shadows or maybe imperfections in the clay, add a kind of depth. Did he see them as flaws, I wonder, or as something beautiful to be captured? The handle, so smoothly curved, invites you to lift and pour, while the little dashes around the center hint at texture. Durand must have looked closely, patiently studying the light as it moved across the pitcher’s surface. He was trying to capture something real, solid, and everyday, and now, we get to see it, too.