2-888-282 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sweet Summer Time - drawn by Gavarni, 1850. Illustration to a story by Thomas Miller: '...beautiful as the landscape is, it lacks a charm unless woman is there to adorn it; it seems like the Garden of Eden without Eve, if she, the "fairest flower," is absent. Whether she breaks the green of the scenery in a dress of spotless white...or wears a provoking little bonnet...as our Artist has here pictured her, she seems in keeping with the scenery...A richly-illustrated book of flowers never seems in its right place so much as when in a fair lady's hand; then it is flower gazing on flower, for "roses reigning in the pride of June" appear not more lovely than a sweet womanly face...what repose there is in the two exquisite figures...the flowers...are not more wrapt up in the contemplation of their own shadows in the water beneath, than they are in admiration of the work of art which has stolen the look of Nature'. From "Illustrated London News", 1850.