2-913-572 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"Fruits" - painted by George Lance - from the Exhibition of the Royal Academy, 1854. Lance '...has chosen his own motto: "Fresh from the teeming lap of bounteous Earth, Nursed by the dews and summer's glowing sun, To juicy, gushing ripeness, fit to fill, The golden vases of an emperor's feast, Where kings are guests." All that nature and Covent-garden can supply in the way of the best fruits of the earth Mr. Lance has copied with a deceptive pencil. He has robbed, and for the same picture, the Zoological Society's Gardens of one of its finest birds, and has sought to represent the beauty of manhood in the owner of such treasures. The man, we must confess, we should have liked to have seen a little more manly: he has been fed too much on his own stores - melons and peaches'. From "Illustrated London News", 1854.