3-008-746 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"Music" by A. B. Clay, from the exhibition of the Royal Academy, 1862. Engraving of a painting. 'The attitude of the head and neck of the lady seated playing an accompaniment on the harmonium is very descriptive - nicely observed and gracefully expressed. And the same may be said of the elderly lady - the mother, maybe, of one or both the young ladies - who sits listening with such pleased attention, and keeping time with her hand, and thinking, perhaps, of many tender and sweet memories which music often recalls with thrilling force when the heart is deaf to all else. Music will often strike the string we thought was broken - will touch the electric chord we thought for ever mute - awake the echoes we thought had died away in the silence of years - among our native hills when all nature was resonant, or on the troubled sea of afterlife. Mr. Clay has appended to the title of his picture in the Royal Academy Catalogue the following quotation: "As for some dear familiar strain Untired we ask, and ask again, Ever in its melodious store Finding a spell unheard before".' From "Illustrated London News", 1862.