Concert

Elyse Ashe Lord

"Concert" is illustrated as Plate VI in "The Studio" publication "Masters of the Colour Print I - Elyse Lord" by Malcolm Salaman in 1927, with different coloring. On page 6 Salaman writes about this image:

"One seems to 'hear' these prints as well as see them, for the colour sings; so in this enchanting "Concert" one may hear strange and lovely music that Persian lovers might have listened to in Omar's day. How stifling the heat, how languorous the air! And those young musicians, so beautifully grouped by the tree to share what shade they may from the slender foliage, perhaps they are only wooing with melodious plaint and gentle zephyr that will kindly pass their way.

But what exquisite factors of design are their strange instruments, and what a print to live with - its lovely orchestra of colour offering a soothing influence for a hundred changing moods."

Salaman comments about her printing on page 2: "The method was to draw the design with dry-point on a copper plate, and then, aquatinting the parts intended for colour, to paint those parts for one printing or more. Many of the early proofs were hand-wiped plate-printings, which gave clean, bright results, though comparatively harder than those of the rag-wipe used so adroitly in the later prints."