Dunkerque c. early 1920s

Frank Myers Boggs made "Dunkerque," probably with watercolor, and what hits you first is the layering, the way the image is built up from washes. You can almost feel Boggs trying to capture the light, smudging and stroking, letting the pigment settle in the paper's nooks and crannies. It's like he's saying, "Here, let me show you how I see it, not just what it is.” Look at the tower. It's this looming, dark mass, but if you zoom in, you'll see the details, the small marks that suggest the stone and the shadows. It's not about precision. It's about the feeling of being there, in the shadow of this huge structure, and the paper and the pigment seem to conspire to mimic the actual grit of the city. For me this evokes Whistler, another artist who got at something essential in an image with very few marks. Boggs isn't trying to give us the whole story, just a glimpse, a feeling. It’s a reminder that art is often about suggestion and not description.