3-008-850 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

a painting. 'At the first glance we cannot help sympathising with the poor little rustic maiden, despite her rags, her scanty dress, her unkempt hair. The ingenuousness, sweetness, dutifulness, the humbleness, the contentment, the lovingness of the little girl steal into our heart the longer we look. As we watch her, we see how intent she is on her mission with the poor, broken family pitcher to the neighbouring well, yet how she looks half back in the direction of home with something like pensive longing, and how all the while she must carry in her caressing arm her own little pet puppy. Can we wonder how the poor child probably came to break her pitcher?...It has been said, though it would appear scarcely credible, that the original of this picture...was not a cottage girl, but a child of high rank. If it was so the painter has perfectly concealed all artificiality, self-consciousness, or assumption of character; but it was more likely a peasant child of the neighbourhood of Bath or his native Sudbury'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.