A Little Boy Lost 1920

Dorothy Lathrop made "A Little Boy Lost" with what looks like watercolor and ink, and there's something about the way she's built up these layers that feels like a process of searching, like she's feeling her way through the dark parts of the woods with a brush. There's a real contrast here. The inky blackness of the forest pressing in, but then this tiny, luminous figure of the boy. See how the color is thin, almost translucent on his skin, while the trees are built up of layers of dark washes? It's like she's using the paint itself to tell us about vulnerability and the unknown. I keep coming back to the shadows in the water – are they menacing, or just part of the natural world? This piece reminds me of some of Paula Modersohn-Becker’s work. Both Lathrop and Modersohn-Becker engage with childhood and the natural world as spaces of both innocence and mystery, leaving us with more questions than answers, which is really what art should be about.