Lantern c. 1937

Albert Eyth made this drawing of a lantern in an unknown year, using what looks like watercolor or maybe colored pencil on paper. It’s a rendering of an object, but it's also a world of its own making. The lantern is bathed in a wash of warm browns and tans, colors that feel both earthy and ethereal. It’s not about capturing the thing ‘just as it is’ in a realist way, but about the act of seeing itself. Look how the light seems to both define the edges and dissolve them, as if the lantern is flickering in and out of focus. That door hanging open, slightly off-kilter, is my favorite part. It’s like an invitation, but also a gentle reminder that things are not always what they seem. Eyth is almost like a more folksy, perhaps even earlier, Philip Guston. Both artists use the mundane as a starting point to explore something deeply personal.