The Paying-out Machinery in the Stern of the Great Eastern

A watercolor of a ship's stern deck at sunset, filled with paying-out machinery: rows of iron wheels, drums and braced frames running along the planks. A crouching worker in the foreground tends the gear while figures stand near the drums at right, under a pink and grey sky. The loose graphite and bodycolor give the scene a sketched, working-document quality.

Look closer: A small worker crouches at the base of the machinery, nearly lost against the dark frame.

Artist

Robert Charles Dudley

Date

1865

Medium

Watercolor over graphite with touches of gouache (bodycolor)

Source

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Size

3758 × 2473 px

Credit (appreciated, not required for public-domain works): The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Cyrus W. Field, 1892