Cigar Store Indian 1935 - 1942

Harriette Gale painted this Cigar Store Indian in watercolour. There is something so beguiling about the way she teases out the details with such delicacy, especially in the way the colours bleed into each other, like the muted golds of the garment against the deeper tones of the decorative patterns. The layering of these colours creates a sense of depth and texture that invites you to imagine the feel of the wood itself. Take a look at the feathers atop the statue’s head. Gale captures their delicate structure with a level of detail that's almost obsessive. Each feather is rendered with distinct strokes, a painstaking process that speaks to an attentiveness and sensitivity. It’s a way of translating the three-dimensional object into a two-dimensional space, but it's also more than that. It’s a conversation between the artist and the artwork, each mark a response to the one before. This reminds me a little of Marsden Hartley, who also sought to capture something essentially American in his paintings. They are both working in a time of modernism, and trying to reach back into the past. It’s a dialogue across time, each artist building upon the foundations laid by those who came before.