Pennsylvania Buckboard c. 1938

Frank Gray made this 'Pennsylvania Buckboard' with watercolour and graphite on paper. Just imagine him now. He is at his desk and has just mixed a fresh puddle of that mossy-bottle green, the one he uses to define the carriage trim. There's something so tender about this image, an everyday object rendered with such care and precision, don't you think? It feels like a love letter to the ingenuity and design of the Pennsylvania Buckboard itself. There's a real attention to detail here, the wheels, spokes, and harness all carefully laid out and depicted. I love the earthy, brown hues of the carriage's wooden elements against the soft, almost translucent green. Gray is sharing with us the texture of the object: the solidity of wood and metal and the cool touch of green paint. I get a sense that Gray really enjoyed rendering technical objects. He wants to show us not just what it is, but how it works. It's like he's saying, "Hey, check out this cool thing I saw and now you can see it too."