Lot Essay
Cf: Mark Haworth-Booth, E. McKnight Kauffer. A Designer and his Public, London, 1979, Pl. 35, p. 50
The present Lot closely resembles McKnight Kauffer's frontispiece for Herman Melville's Benito Cereno, published by the Nonesuch Press in 1926. It has been described as 'one of the most brilliant designs he ever conceived...he built up a shimmering design of a ship becalmed at last light which has an intricate beauty of which the eye can never tire'.
The present Lot closely resembles McKnight Kauffer's frontispiece for Herman Melville's Benito Cereno, published by the Nonesuch Press in 1926. It has been described as 'one of the most brilliant designs he ever conceived...he built up a shimmering design of a ship becalmed at last light which has an intricate beauty of which the eye can never tire'.