Study for Miles Standish’s Challenge 1969

Edwin Austin Abbey made this drawing, Study for Miles Standish’s Challenge, with pen and ink and wash. The overall impression is scratchy and immediate, with lines built up to give weight and shadow, but also to give a sense of movement. There’s this really beautiful, almost frantic energy, and you can see Abbey working through his ideas, feeling his way through the composition. I keep looking at the floorboards, which are drawn in such simple, repetitive lines, but they really create the space. It’s like the whole scene is happening on this slightly tilted stage. The stage is crowded with the colonizers and the indigenous man, who stands in the foreground. The drawing reminds me a little of Käthe Kollwitz’s prints, in that it shares a similar intensity and focus on the human figure, and deals with narratives of conflict and oppression. But like Kollwitz, Abbey's drawing leaves space for us to reflect on these themes, rather than dictating a single interpretation.