2-981-798 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"The Village Belle" - by H. Schlesinger, from the exhibition at the French Gallery, 1876. Engraving of a painting. '...Herr H. Schlesinger seems to have broken, or to be intending to break, comparatively new ground...Here...we have a rustic beauty of no marked nationality. But why is the belle of the village seated alone in this leafy retreat, nibbling the stalk of a flower with an air so sweetly pensive, if not disconsolate? For whom has she plucked that pretty basketful of flowers? Is this a trysting-place, and doth the expected one not come? These are questions which are in the poetical province of the painter to ask; but which we hold it is our duly to leave to the ingenuity, discernment, fancy, and sympathy of our readers to answer each for him or her self'. From "Illustrated London News", 1876.