3-017-085 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"Christmas Time", by Miss E. Osborne, in the exhibition of the Royal Academy, 1865. Engraving of a painting '...which in technical qualities, and particularly in its rich and harmonious colouring, is in advance of some recent paintings by this accomplished artist. The subject is essentially feminine in conception, showing, as it does, not only how feminine hands deck our homes at the great Christian festival, but, as it seems to us, suggesting also how to the presence of women we owe the charms and endearments of the winter fireside - love and beauty and innocence, weaving a triple spell round the hearth: the love of maternity, the beauty of maidenhood, and the innocence of childhood. The ancient interior, with its oak panelling and quaint fireplaces, and with a portrait of some armed ancestor, as well as the decking of the knightly casque, tell us that the family before us is of ancient race...Miss Osborne has appended to the title of her picture in the Academy catalogue the following line from the old ballad of "The Mistletoe Bough" - evidently, however, without, in the picture, pointing to the catastrophe of that ballad: The holly-branch shone on the old oak wall'. From "Illustrated London News", 1865.