3-008-752 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"The Cradle", by J. Israëls, in the International Exhibition, 1862. Engraving of a painting. 'We have observed that..."The Cradle" is greatly admired by the ladies. To the ladies, then - and we are vain enough to think that we number more fair readers than any of our contemporaries - we commend this Engraving. But before any sterner male reader turns to another page we would ask if there is not some more recondite meaning than might at first be suspected - some infant thought in the cradle? There seems to us to be something, at all events, very suggestive in the Dutch painter, who lives in a country that may almost be said to be cradled by the sea, and who must literally know the smell of the sea from his cradle, painting this picture of the washing of the family cradle on the seashore. Whether or not there be anything beneath the surface of this picture no one will shame his manhood, whose heart is in the right place, by looking for a few moments at this little girl emulating the national mania of the Dutch for scrubbing, or even at the prettily-expressed, absorbed look of the child-sister'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.