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SAVOYV1_icon15_whistler_drawing-crop

This line-block reproduction of a wood-engraved image is in portrait orientation. The image shows a woman seated on the deck of a ship in the water, with land in the distant horizon. The woman fills about the bottom right quadrant of the page. She sits facing the right side of the page, showing the profile of her face looking out to sea over the hull. She is wearing a large, light-coloured gown that puffs out into a big skirt. She has a dark shawl wrapped around her arms and the back of the skirt. One of her arms, the left, is leaning on the rail of the ship and the other is bent, holding up the shawl. She has on a bonnet that covers the back of her head and her bangs peek out from the front. The bonnet ties underneath her chin and the ties hang down the front of her dress. To the right of the woman’s face in the background appear four seagulls flying above the water and towards the skyline. The deck extends behind her. The railing continues towards the left side of the page upwards and diagonally. The ropes that hold the ship’s masts are tied off on the hooks that line the railing in the mid-ground and to the left of the woman. There are eight ropes that tie off, cutting vertically through the middle and left side of the page. The deck drops slightly lower after a few steps down and then continues out of sight towards the left. More ropes are shown attached to the distant railing but are mostly cut off from the frame on the left edge of the page. Behind the rail, ropes, and the woman is the watery background. The water rises to about three-quarters up the page, showing slight waves rising throughout. Behind the water the outline of a landscape appears lightly sketched to represent a body of land that has mountains and valleys. The sky has one sketched cloud and is above the land for a small portion of the page. The artist’s name, “Whistler,” appears scrawled in the bottom left corner of the page diagonally aimed down to the right, and the engraver’s signature, “Swain,” appears at centre bottom.