A Little Boy Lost 1920

Dorothy Lathrop made this striking ink drawing, A Little Boy Lost, using delicate stippling and cross-hatching techniques. It looks like an illustration from a book of dark fairy tales, where nothing is quite as it seems. The contrasts of light and shadow are stark, built up with thousands of tiny dots. Look at the way Lathrop uses the negative space to create luminosity in the figure of the sleeping woman and the cascade of water. I keep returning to that water; the energy feels so raw and full of movement. Each droplet is carefully rendered, and the effect is a kind of controlled chaos. The composition is full of unsettling surrealism, the kind that makes you question the boundary between dreams and reality. You can see a similar sensibility in the work of illustrators like Aubrey Beardsley. But Lathrop brings her own unique touch, emphasizing the mystical qualities of the natural world. It reminds us that art is a continual conversation, each artist building on the foundations laid by those who came before.