Ragged Sails (Primary Title)
Third Indian and Ladaki Set (Set Title)
Ernest Stephen Lumsden, English, 1883–1948 (Artist)
Ernest Stephen Lumsden, English, 1883–1948 (Printer)
After his second India trip, Lumsden rarely drew directly onto his plates in the field. Some later works—like this enchanting view of boats upon the Ganges’s serene waters—were the results of long, meticulous revision. Based on a print of the preceding year, this plate was reworked by Lumsden no fewer than thirteen times before he settled on this final version. Richly rendered against a featureless sky—clouds removed from earlier states—the boats’ large rectangular sails are patchworks of smaller pieces of cloth. The artist described such vessels: “upstream beyond the drifting wood-smoke from the funeral pyres on mani karnika ghat are always two or three of the lumbering, high-sterned craft which bring down wood for the burning and stone for the building, . . . swinging slowly at their moorings.”
ed. 30
Signed in ink "Lumsden imp" at bottom center along plate line; also in ink "32 60"
Title inscribed in print margin; also inscribed in graphite by Harold Wright: A40663 and S17406 [strike through].
Gift of Frank Raysor
Light and Line: E. S. Lumsden's Visions of India, VMFA South Asian Galleries, April 11, 2016 - April 4, 2017
Copley, John. “The Later Etchings of E. S. Lumsden”, The Print Collector’s Quarterly, July 1936. Includes a chronological list, 1905-1935, compiled by E. S. Lumsden.
©artist or artist’s estate
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