Seated Dancer (Dancer with white peonies)

Elyse Ashe Lord

Many of the images Elyse Ashe Lord created were amalgamations of her studies of Eastern dance, mythology, and culture, places she was never able to visit but in which she found great inspiration. This image appears to be a depiction of a Cambodian or Indonesian dancer wearing a headpiece draped on either side with white blossoms. Behind the dancer Lord has rendered over-sized white peonies as a backdrop.

British art critic Malcolm Salaman commented on Lord's printing on page 2 of the "The Studio" publication "Masters of the Colour Print I - Elyse Lord" by Malcolm Salaman in 1927:

"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."

Elyse Ashe Lord, painter and printmaker, is well-known for her works inspired by the Far East and for her unusual, multi-layered printmaking technique, which involved a combination of etching, drypoint, aquatint and woodcut. She lived her entire life in Britain and although her work shows a strong Asian influence, she never actually traveled the continent. Her inspiration instead came from Chinese literature, artwork and her own imagination. Her unique style uses fine drypoint lines and delicate, yet vibrant colors to create images that that have a serene, almost dreamlike quality. Lord also designed and hand-painted many of the frames used on her prints.