His Reeds

His Reeds, an undated lithograph by Thomas Handforth held at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, is a strong example of the artist's lithographic practice and his interest in single-figure subjects engaged in traditional manual occupations. The composition centres on a male figure shown full-length, gathering or carrying reeds — a domestic and craft occupation widely practised across the rural communities of North Africa, Mexico, and China that Handforth observed at first hand during his long expatriate years. The lithographic line is bolder and softer than the etched work, with the figure modelled through extended passages of crayon-drawn shading and the surrounding ground handled in looser strokes; the resulting image has the warm, slightly velvety surface characteristic of lithography on stone. The print belongs to the bequest of Olin Dows, which brought a substantial group of Handforth's prints and drawings to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 1983 (https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/his-reeds-9909), and is recorded under accession number 1983.90.65 with open access status through the museum's open access programme. For students of Thomas Handforth, His Reeds is a useful demonstration that his print practice was not exclusively etched: the lithographic sheets from the late 1920s and 1930s sit alongside the etchings as evidence of his serious engagement with both major print media of the period, and the technique he refined in works of this kind fed directly into the lithographs that illustrate the Caldecott-winning Mei Li.