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Shipboard

George Copeland Ault

American Art

Depicting a cluster of smokestacks, ducts, and pipes on an ocean liner, this drawing features the kinds of mechanical and industrial imagery embraced by Precisionist artists as icons of modern America. A style that arose in the 1920s, Precisionism was characterized by simplified geometric forms and an absence of human beings. Here George Copeland Ault cropped the view of the ship’s machinery in order to focus attention on the aesthetic potential of his subject—the play of rounded and linear shapes and dark and light tones—rather than its practical function.
MEDIUM Graphite on medium, cream, slightly textured, wove paper
DATES 1924
DIMENSIONS Sheet: 9 x 6 in. (22.9 x 15.2 cm)  (show scale)
SIGNATURE Signed in graphite, upper left: "G.C. Ault '24."
COLLECTIONS American Art
ACCESSION NUMBER 2007.46
CREDIT LINE Gift of Manhattan Art Investments, LP
MUSEUM LOCATION This item is not on view
CAPTION George Copeland Ault (American, 1891–1948). Shipboard, 1924. Graphite on medium, cream, slightly textured, wove paper, Sheet: 9 x 6 in. (22.9 x 15.2 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Manhattan Art Investments, LP, 2007.46 (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 2007.46_PS2.jpg)
IMAGE overall, 2007.46_PS2.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2010
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