3-017-165 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"Le Petit Minet", by W. L. Thomas, from the exhibition of the Institute of Painters in Water Colours, 1865. 'Mr. Thomas's ability as an engraver, before he made his debut as a painter in water colours, can scarcely be unknown to the readers of this Journal...Almost as vividly as if we saw them, do these children stand out against the sunlighted wall of that crazy old fisherman's cottage (as we infer it to be by the haddock drying against the wall) the girl with the quaint, old-fashioned mob-cap; the earrings, shawl, jerkin, and short petticoat of the full-grown Picardy fishwoman; the miniature matelot, clad, not less precociously, in his great red worsted cap, coarse, shrunken blue overshirt, and baggy, pieced-out, tar-begrimed, and polished trousers...Though beyond the doll period, the little matron must needs have something to nurse, so, in default of a baby sister, she cradles the family kitten in her arms; and the boy, sea-urchin as he is, unable to restrain his mischievous - but, as we see by his expression, hardly cruel - propensities, teases tiny pussy by tickling her ears with a straw, an experiment in natural history to which that little animal will probably ere long make some sharp opposition'. From "Illustrated London News", 1865.