Hat c. 1937

This watercolour of a hat was made by Barnes sometime between 1855 and 1995, that’s quite a stretch! It’s really a drawing, when you get up close, all of those little lines are like tiny pencil marks, so regular and tight, building up the tone. You can see the process. Look at the way that Barnes made the ribbon, with all those layers of thin, translucent pink, building up to a solid colour, as if to let the form emerge slowly. It’s the same with the roses, each petal seems to grow from the last, from the inside out. It reminds me of some of those drawings of dresses and interiors by Bonnard. There's such an intimate quality to them. This piece has the same dreamy feel. Art is never really finished, it's just abandoned, as they say, and this drawing feels like something delicate, like a half-remembered dream.