Marching as to War 1904

This is Helen Hyde’s ‘Marching as to War’, a colour etching showing a child walking, holding a flag. Hyde lived in Japan and was inspired by Japanese prints. I can imagine her in her studio carefully laying down each colour, line by line, building up the image like a puzzle. The child's kimono has these bold, dark tones, like midnight in a flower garden. But the rest of the scene, the street and the suggestion of the figure behind, is all pale washes. You can feel the lightness of air in the wide white space. I like to think about how she captured the small details, like the pattern on the child's kimono, yet kept the overall impression fresh and immediate. There’s a real conversation that happens in this print, between Western and Eastern traditions, between observation and imagination. And this conversation continues every time someone stops to look.