3-008-554 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The International Exhibition: "Fetching the Old Mare Home" by F. W. Keyl, 1862. Engraving of a painting. 'This carefully and powerfully painted picture tells its simple story well. We see that the faithful old animal has had a holiday (whether on its birthday or not we cannot say), during which it has had full scope to follow its own devices on the wide, uninclosed, heathy common. Many a time, no doubt, has it trotted about in vague recollection of youthful friskings and gambols; often has it rolled over and over on its back after the insane manner of the equine race. The time has arrived, however, for Mrs. Dobbin to return to the prosaic world, and her more useful, though less agreeable, life in harness. So the peasant farmer's daughter, aided by her little sister, and a sieve of com, is sent to inveigle the old lass from the companion who still looks dejectedly after her over the distant brow of the hill. She is still a little resentful at her loss of liberty, and it is quite as much as our pretty, sunburnt, barefooted damsel can do to restrain her trotting along too briskly by tugging at her ragged ear. The windiness of the open common is well expressed in the streaming mane of the mare and the flying skirts of the young woman and child'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.