Hand-signed by the artist, with title, date, and edition number inscribed in ink on an archival label affixed to the reverse side of the mounted photograph.
Nothing in a house holds still quite like a branch of pussy willow, and this picture takes that stillness as a kind of dare. A tall pewter pitcher stands on a dark table against a wall of deep navy, and out of it erupts a great spray of willow, its bare twigs studded with soft grey catkins that seem to hold their own faint light. Facing them, at the left, a long-haired girl leans in, her profile lit, her whole attention given to the silent plant.
The pairing is faintly comic if you let it be: the child and the shrub, regarding each other across a foot of darkness like two guests at a party who have run out of things to say. But the picture will not quite let you laugh. The light, coming from somewhere off to the side in the old Dutch manner, models the girl’s cheek and the metal belly of the jug with the same reverence, and a stray willow twig has slipped to the tabletop, tied with a bit of string.
Harvey, who lives on the coast of Maine and is widely exhibited in American museums, has made her name, in books such as Blue Violet and You an Orchestra a Bomb, on this ability to make ordinary domestic things vibrate with more feeling than they can strictly hold. Here she does it in near-darkness. The archival pigment print carries that low, blue-black key without muddying it, keeping the pale catkins luminous and the pewter softly gleaming, so the whole quiet standoff keeps its glow while the room falls away into shadow.
Nothing in a house holds still quite like a branch of pussy willow, and this picture takes that stillness as a kind of dare. A tall pewter pitcher stands on a dark table against a wall of deep navy, and out of it erupts a great spray of willow, its bare twigs studded with soft grey catkins that seem to hold their own faint light. Facing them, at the left, a long-haired girl leans in, her profile lit, her whole attention given to the silent plant.
The pairing is faintly comic if you let it be: the child and the shrub, regarding each other across a foot of darkness like two guests at a party who have run out of things to say. But the picture will not quite let you laugh. The light, coming from somewhere off to the side in the old Dutch manner, models the girl’s cheek and the metal belly of the jug with the same reverence, and a stray willow twig has slipped to the tabletop, tied with a bit of string.
Harvey, who lives on the coast of Maine and is widely exhibited in American museums, has made her name, in books such as Blue Violet and You an Orchestra a Bomb, on this ability to make ordinary domestic things vibrate with more feeling than they can strictly hold. Here she does it in near-darkness. The archival pigment print carries that low, blue-black key without muddying it, keeping the pale catkins luminous and the pewter softly gleaming, so the whole quiet standoff keeps its glow while the room falls away into shadow.