The Eemis Stane
1967
Artist, American, 1922 - 2000
Author, Scottish, 1892 - 1978
Carver
Publisher
Artwork overview
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Medium
woodcut in black with color letterpress on wove paper
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Credit Line
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Dimensions
image: 21.91 × 17.78 cm (8 5/8 × 7 in.)
sheet: 58.1 × 34.29 cm (22 7/8 × 13 1/2 in.) -
Accession
2013.121.135
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Catalogue Raisonné
Fern/O'Sullivan 1984, no. 730
Artwork history & notes
Provenance
Jay Finkel, Washington, DC; acquired 2013 by the National Gallery of Art
Associated Names
Bibliography
1984
Fern, Alan, and Judith O'Sullivan. The Complete Prints of Leonard Baskin: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1948-1983. Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown and Company, 1984, no. 730.
Inscriptions
lower left in black letterpress: Baskin del.; lower right in black letterpress: Takahara sculpt.; lower left in graphite: Leonard Baskin
text in image:
I’ the how-dumb-deid o’ the cauld hairst nicht / The warl’ like an eemis stane / Wags i’ the lift; / An’ my eerie memories fa’ / Like a yowdendrift. / Like a yowdendrift so’s I couldna read / The words cut oot i’ the stane / Had the fug o’ fame / An’ history’s hazelraw / No’ yirdit thaim. / HUGH MACDIARMID / THE EEMIS STANE / In the very dead of the cold harvest night the world, like a loose tombstone, sways in the sky; and my awesome / memories fall like a down-drive of snow. Like a down-drive of snow so that I cannot read the words cut out on the / stone even if the moss of fame and the lichen of history had not overgrown them. / Five hundred copies printed at The Gehanna Press at Northampton, Massachusetts, April 1967.
Wikidata ID
Q77005665