3-017-063 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"Infant Orphan Election at the London Tavern - Polling", by G.E. Hicks, in the exhibition of the Royal Academy, 1865. Engraving of a painting. The picture is '...essentially pathetic and dramatic in the contrasts it presents, and yet one that is not devoid of food for innocent humour...an opportunity is afforded for obeying the Divine injunction to "Remember the widow and the fatherless," and at the same time for enjoying all the excitement of a political contest...What an irresistible sensation header might be borrowed from one of the placards in this picture by some great unknown candidate: "No father, no mother! Second application!"...Seriously, however, this picture has much that is pathetic as well as humorous...we must not ignore the strong under-current of sadness which must be experienced on witnessing such a scene as this...only a small proportion of those applicants can be elected. This, if we read the picture aright, is plainly intimated by the anxiety of the young widow to the left, though well supported, and by that of others elsewhere, but still more in the heartbroken disappointment depicted in the attitude and expression of the poor woman to the right, with her unconscious child playing at her side'. From "Illustrated London News", 1865.