Name/Title
Bait Boat | Pauline Winchester Inman | Wood Engraving | 1943Description
Artist: Pauline Inman
Medium: Wood Engraving
Old Accession Number: 674
Description:
Pencil signed. 1943. 22/40.
Bait Boat, 1943
Wood Engraving
The predominantly dark tone of this print accentuates the glimpses of light in the composition–the highlights on the fish bodies–imparting a sense of their shimmery scales and the mass of slippery, wriggling bodies in the wooden boat. Compared to many of Inman’s prints, Bait Boat employs a deliberately zoomed-in and cropped composition, with no significant distinction between foreground, middle ground, and background, and no figures to guide the viewers’ eyes. Instead, the viewer is guided by Inman’s usage of light and dark and the patterns of her mark making. The cropped composition allows the viewer to complete the scene in their mind’s eye, imagining the scent of the fish, the sea spray on their skin, the incessant calls of the pursuant gulls, and the lapping of the water against the sides of the boat.