3-021-008 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"The Arab Storyteller", by J. E. Hodgson, in the Exhibition of the Royal Academy, 1869. Engraving of a painting. '...the art of more or less fictitious narrative is everywhere cultivated throughout the East...It is natural this should be so among people to whom literature and the newspaper are unknown. The wandering life of the Arab tribes, and the fervid Arabian fancy, are eminently conducive to success in the art...[The reader may] readily imagine the kind of tale which the Arab story-teller is relating with so much animation, and with occasional emphasis of a tap on his tom-tom...[The subject] is derived from observations made by Mr. Hodgson during a residence last winter in North Africa. The scene is laid outside the walls of Tangiers...the expressions are discriminated with equal nicety, according to age and character. The aged sheikh listens quite impassively; some of the...men of middle age also preserve their gravity, or are swayed...by the dramatic, passionate descriptions of the speaker; whilst others, more humorously disposed, smile at his assumption of sincerity or in anticipation of the sequel to the story...some of the boys are enthralled or mystified, whilst others laugh outright, as though detecting the fun of a farce'. From "Illustrated London News", 1869.