Running away

A group of tall, stylized figures — draped women, a nude child raising a torch, a horn-blower, and a seated figure with a fan-like tail — stand crowded together on a boat that seems to carry them across a night sea teeming with fish. A crescent moon and scattered stars fill the sky above, with moths or winged insects drifting between the figures.

Worked in fine etched line and tinted in deep blue-black and warm sepia, the print sets pale, patterned figures against an inky, star-flecked ground. The crowded, theatrical arrangement and glowing highlights on skin and drapery give the scene a charged, dreamlike urgency, as though the boat's passengers are fleeing into the dark.