3-028-201 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"A Brown Study," by W. Hunt, 1870. Engraving of a painting. '...William Hunt often took black or dark-skinned models as subjects, always treating them with a peculiarly gentle humour or pathetic gravity. Several drawings of negro children engaged in devotion are instances of the latter; and the drawing we this week engrave, from the Ellison Collection in the South Kensington Museum, is an example of the former. This little half-cast is not made to look more ludicrous or less intelligent as he puzzles over the gigantic addition sum set out on his slate than if he were a white-skin. To the felicitous, perfect truth of the expression, as, unconsciously biting his pencil, the little fellow's eyes roll sideways and upwards in far-off abstractions, we need not draw attention. But, as our reproduction is necessarily confined to black and white, we may indicate the innocent, but sly, double entendre of the title by saying that not only is the young arithmetician figuratively in a "brown study," but he is literally a brown mulatto himself; and, besides this, the artist's "study" of his brown subject is also in its general effect brown'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.