3-008-577 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"Children of the Coast", by E. J. Cobbett, in the Exhibition of the Society of British Artists, 1862. Engraving of a painting. 'It is the prerogative of painting, even more than of poetry, to interest with the simplest materials and the humblest of our fellow-creatures. A written idyll could scarcely convey to us the sweet ingenuousness, the interested attention, and the confiding affection in the blue upturned eyes of the boy in this picture. It could not either, without the risk of lengthy triviality of particulars, place before us this little girl in all her quaint, unkempt rusticity, and show us the pretty air of superiority she assumes in virtue of her slight advantage of age over her little brother or companion...How often have most of us in childhood sat as idly by the seashore...?' From "Illustrated London News", 1862.