David with Lyre
Ben Shahn (1898 - 1969), Lithuania / America, ca. 1966
Ink brush drawing on rice paper
513 x 513 mm.
Chop; signed "Ben Shahn" lower right.

This exquisite ink brush drawing on rice paper represents the biblical David as a young man, before he became King of Israel. David's lyre is a reference to the soothing music he played to calm King Saul's troubled spirit, and to his reputation as composer of the psalms of the Bible. The drawing served as the basis for a number of works by Ben Shahn. Most directly related to this composition is the serigraph "Praise Him with Psaltery and Harp", produced in 1966. Notice Ben Shahn's signature in red to the lower right of the drawing. Stamped in red ink above his name is the chop Shahn designed for himself. So much did he delight in letter forms that Shahn modified his own Alphabet of Creation, a striking arrangement of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet first printed as a large serigraph in 1957, to serve as his signature stamp.