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DIALV3-ricketts-thebaidAE

The line block engraving is an illustration to Oscar Wilde’s The Sphinx. It is set into a thin, rectangular double rule and printed in portrait orientation in reddish brown ink. The image depicts a large structure built of rectangular stones on either side of a stone pathway which extends away from the viewer into an empty backdrop. Out of an opening on the structure on the left, a Sphinx—with a human face and hair, eagle wings, and lion’s feet—flies out into the centre of the image with its face turned up to the sky. Opposite the Sphinx is a larger stone structure, decorated at the extreme right foreground with a stone statue of a seated king who faces the viewer frontally. His face is defaced and his crown is broken. Flowering vines entangle the statue and the structure behind him.