2-981-949 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"Mural Decorations" by A. Stocks, in the exhibition at the Dudley Gallery, 1876. Engraving of a painting. 'An infant genius, a future R.A. it may be...has appropriated the blacking-bottle and its stick, and therewith has executed a number of "figure designs" on the clean whitewash walls of the cottage...and is caught...red-handed, or rather black-handed, by his aged grandmother, who perhaps, suspecting from his silence that more than ordinary mischief is being perpetrated by the "enfant terrible," has surprised him unawares, and, heedless of the attempts of the youthful prodigy, will, we fear, inflict what she may consider condign punishment'. From "Illustrated London News", 1876.