3-020-992 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"Loading Sand - Pas de Calais: Threatening Weather", by R. Beavis, from last year's Royal Academy Exhibition, 1868. Engraving of a painting. '...the movement enlivening this representation is chiefly confined to the effects of wind and the drift of the gathering clouds. We may notice, however, as evincing faithful observation of nature, the looks of patient inquiry and a certain air of unrest about the horses, indicative of the sensitiveness to changes of weather of those sagacious creatures...The fine shifting sand of the Pas de Calais is, we presume, in special request. The demand for such sand must be very great, judging by the frequency with which one sees the sanded floor (so common with us in olden time) in the north-western departments of France, and likewise in Belgium, not only in cabaret and estaminet, but even in private dwellings and some public buildings'. From "Illustrated London News", 1868.