3-008-675 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The International Exhibition - "Nameless and Friendless", by Miss Osborn, 1862. Engraving of a painting. '...the sad story of a poor orphan girl (still in her mourning dress) left to support herself and a dependent and helpless brother...Poor thing! she hoped...that her picture - her last, her best picture - upon which she has been expending strength and thought during many anxious days, perhaps months, might bring something to save her from starvation. She dreamed that, at all events, it might induce some kind friend to assist her. But we need not look at the picture to know its fate; that is too plainly visible in the smug, disingenuous face of the dealer behind the counter, as ignorant, probably, as he is satisfied with his own connoisseurship, elevating his eyebrows and stroking his chin in the accustomed depreciatory manner when there is anything to buy, and yet hardly deigning to look down upon the picture. How painful is the poor girl's look of sickening disappointment - what agony in the fingers nervously pulling at the string! This, however, is a mere mercenary brute; we see it in every feature of his ugly visage..."Nameless and Friendless," God help thee!'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.