Dressed to Kill, Dressed to Till
Lot 110:
Watercolor, ink and graphite on woven paper, 11 x 8 ½ inches; conservation matted (8 ½ x 6 ½ view) within ebonized walnut frame, 15 ½ x 13 inches overall. A Highland shepherd boy in the characteristic blue-knit, Scots bonnet, a “shepherd’s maude” slung across his shoulders, and practical “high-lows” (laced ankle boots). Edward Duncan (1803-1882) was a London-based landscape and marine artist who began his career as a copyist and engraver in the studio of Robert Havell, where he learned aquatint engraving. Duncan had little firsthand knowledge of ships and the sea, and instead specialized in coastal scenes, craft and inhabitants, which he sketched from life during his travels in Britain and on the Continent. Although he also worked in oil, Duncan excelled in watercolor in which he “could achieve a freshness and immediacy that transcend[ed] formula and imitation” with a “subtlety and crispness in the handling.”
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