Dinner Dress 1935 - 1942

Hedwig Emanuel made this watercolor, called Dinner Dress, at some point in her long life, which stretched from 1855 to 1995! It's like a memory, isn't it? The soft color and botanical forms give it a very intimate and personal feeling, like a pressed flower in a diary. The process here is all about layering, about building something up from a sketch or idea. The underdrawing, visible at the second dress, gives a sense of how Emanuel was thinking about the piece, adjusting her composition, as she worked. Look closely at the main dress. The application of color feels a bit tentative, like a blush. The weave of the imagined fabric is barely visible beneath the reddish, leafy pattern. It reminds me of the work of Elizabeth Murray, who also blurred the line between domestic life and artistic invention. Both artists suggest that a painting is never really finished, just inhabited for a time.