Description

Arms planned a series of color aquatints that would illustrate the history and development of the ship from the earliest times to the present day, but he only created seven plates including this one. His etching and aquatints resemble ukiyo-e––Japanese 18th- and 19th-century color woodcuts––in the subtly graduated flat areas of tone, simplified and silhouetted shapes, tilted perspective, asymmetry, truncated forms, and the exaggerated juxtaposition of foreground and background.