Revolver 1935 - 1942

Rose Campbell-Gerke made this drawing, Revolver, without a date. It shows a revolver with a frieze of a stagecoach robbery above. The gun dominates the picture plane, its brown handle and grey barrel rendered with delicate gradations, suggesting a metallic sheen. Look closely, and you can see the artist’s hand at work in the miniature, almost imperceptible details of light and shadow. Above, the stagecoach robbery is sketched in grey. There's a lot of action in the frieze, but the gun is static and heavy, rendered with more attention. The narrative of the robbery becomes secondary, a backdrop to the potential of violence. Campbell-Gerke's contemporary, Joseph Stella, also drew realistic renderings of industrial subjects, like the Brooklyn Bridge. However, while Stella celebrated the modern world, Campbell-Gerke seems to reflect on an older one, laden with nostalgia and the latent threat of violence. Ultimately, what we get from this is that a lot of these images embrace ambiguity and many interpretations.