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Fast-charging pigs, a tubful of men, and a nonchalant miller encircle the texts of four short rhymes. This giddy whirl of activity with many potential collision courses is visually anchored to the eventual printed page by text and titles that float over transparent layers of watercolor. Discontinuous areas of green watercolor "grass" form an oval that brings the composition together.
Duvoisin takes full advantage of the visual ambiguity that these teasing areas of green create. The man riding a pig on the upper-left corner of the double-page spread is drawn to the same scale as the three men in the tub, at the lower left. Is he in an entirely different space, or behind them in the imaginary distance? Could he be above them, on a hillside, as he literally is above them on the page? As modern viewers accustomed to the visual conventions of the bird's-eye view, with its flattened, distorted forms and high horizon line, we can easily assume that all the activities on the left-hand page are happening in the same real, though somewhat odd landscape.
On the right-hand page, the curved shapes of the grass areas reinforce the notion that the landscape is a unit, but other elements of the composition challenge such an interpretation. Extending the presumption of a bird's-eye view to the right-hand side of the double-page spread falters at the jaunty figure of the Jolly Miller, whose body is seen from the side, even though the road and the grass under his feet unroll vertically behind him as in a bird's-eye view. Above the Jolly Miller on the right-hand page, the man in brown, whose entire form floats perilously on undefined white space, grips a clearly airborne pig. The strong curve of the grass suggests that the figures are silhouetted against the sky on the crest of a hill. But where will they land when they come to rest? The downward-pointing curves of the grass under the title of "Dickery dickery, dare" and the shape of the coattails of the man in brown seem to aim his form at the miller, almost as though he were falling from one earth to another. None of the conventions of perspective, such as distinctly smaller size or more muted color, is present to confirm that one scene is behind another. Instead, Duvoisin's compositional approach here embraces flatness and the integrity and visual excitement of the page design. Bright forms orbit the flat little green and white world of the page in a satisfying balance of sizes and shapes. The artist's choice of spatial ambiguity suggests a slapstick comedy in the making.
Mother Goose: A Comprehensive Collection of the Rhymes. Edited by William Rose Benét. New York: The Heritage Press, 1936
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Illustration for "High diddle doubt" and "Rub-a dub-dub"
Page 126
Gouache, ink, and collage on paper
12 5/8 x 9 5/8 inches
Gift of Louise Fatio Duvoisin
1986.1191.093 |
Illustration for "Dickery, dickery, dare" and "The Jolly Miller"
Page 127
Gouache, ink, and collage on paper
12 5/8 x 9 ˝ inches
Gift of Louise Fatio Duvoisin
1986.1191.049 |
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