Wooden Chest 1938

This wooden chest was rendered in watercolor by Eugene C. Miller, sometime between 1855 and 1995. The palette here is really calling to me, all these browns and blues, just lightly brushed onto the paper – it's as if Miller was trying to capture the essence of the chest, rather than create a perfect copy of it. I wonder what Miller was thinking about when he made this painting. Was he interested in folk art and the Pennsylvania German tradition? What drew him to this particular object? He might have thought of Jacob Benila, whose name is painted inside. You know, it's funny, I can almost feel the textures of the wood in this painting. The way the watercolor is applied, you can feel the grain. Miller wasn't afraid to let the painting be itself, and that's what I love about it. Artists today owe so much to these earlier painters, who explored artmaking’s possibilities, expanding our capacity to imagine new forms and ideas.