Chinese Man

Chinese Man, an undated etching by Thomas Handforth held at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, is one of the most direct single-figure studies from the artist's long Peking residence between 1931 and 1936 and gives a clear example of the kind of patient observed work he undertook in the Chinese capital. The composition centres on a single full-length male figure, dressed in the work clothes of pre-war North China and shown with a dagger or knife at his belt — a detail catalogued in the museum's subject indexing and a reminder that Handforth's subjects were the actual street figures, market porters, and labourers of Peking rather than romanticised types. The etched line is loose and confident; the figure is built from a small number of strong contour strokes and a tight cluster of internal hatching that conveys the heavy cotton of the clothing and the weight of the body, while the background is left comparatively open. The print belongs to the bequest of Olin Dows that brought a substantial group of Handforth's prints and drawings to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 1983 (https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/chinese-man-9907); the impression is recorded under accession number 1983.90.63 and is marked as 'free to use' under the museum's open access programme. For students of Thomas Handforth, Chinese Man is one of the foundational prints of his Peking period and a useful reminder that his Caldecott-winning Mei Li sat atop a much larger body of observational graphic work made in the same streets and courtyards.