The Dead Sea

McBey’s prints, together with those of fellow Scots, David Young Cameron and Muirhead Bone, provide a vital link between the etchings of James McNeill Whistler, the early years of etching revival and the phenomenal flourishing of the etching market during the 1920s—a period when more etchings were made, editioned, published, exhibited, sold, and resold than at any other time in history.

This etching shows a patrol embarking at the northern edge of the Dead Sea on a moonlit night. In the foreground, boats abandoned by the Turks have been holed with bayonet gashes. In the distance are the hills of Moab. Although dated in the image “23 March 1918,” this work, like all of James McBey’s desert war subjects, was not fine-tuned and completed until some years after the end of WWI.