3-011-846 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"Scene from Tennyson's 'Dora'", by A. H. Burr, 1864. Engraving of a painting. The '...reconciliation scene...We remember nothing finer in the whole exhibition than that rugged head of old farmer Allen, with the writhing of the hard muscles of the face, the tearful eyes, and clamped mouth - presenting so true an index of the contention between stern, resentful pride and newly-awakened remorse - hopeless regret and yearning paternal affection. The successful rendering of that most difficult thing in art - mixed emotion - is the more remarkable, because the artist places the old man (and, by-the-way, suggestively and poetically) with his back against the cheerful daylight of the window, and illumines his features only with the reflection from the fire over which at his desolate hearth he so bitterly broods. The expressions and gestures of Mary and Dora show equal insight and power of representing the unspoken but unmistakable language of the heart. Nor are any of the technical qualities of the picture inferior to its high mental characteristics...The dénouement of this domestic drama, or idyl, is that "Those four abode Within one house together; and as years Went forward, Mary took another mate; But Dora lived unmarried till her death".' From "Illustrated London News", 1864.