2-798-588 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Pilgrims to the Holy Well - by F.W. Topham - from the new water colour exhibition, 1845. 'This is one of the most masterly pictures in the Exhibition of the New Society of Painters in Water Colours. The reader need scarcely be told that the scene is from the Green Isle, so exquisitely characteristic are the portraitures of Irish life. The devotion of the two figures kneeling at the Well - one drinking of the "holy water", and the other in fervent praye r- is admirably contrasted with the vacancy of the seated girl; the intervening and the distant figures, too, are equally expressive in their way. This picture, which is of somewhat large size, has been sold for sixty-five guineas'. From "Illustrated London News", 1845, Vol VII.