3-028-335 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"Thoughts of Home," by Guido Bach, 1870. 'Mr. Bach, the painter of this effective drawing in the exhibition of the Water-Colour Institute, has done wisely in limiting the view of his subject to the bust...If more of the figure had been included, we might...have wished the little outlandish urchin...safely back to the place he seems to be yearning for. The sight of a nasally-toned, squeaking flageolet, or of a scraping, grinding, ear-torturing hurdy-gurdy, would have been quite sufficient to replace any approach to pity or commiseration with hate and direst thoughts of vengeance...As it is, we have some chance of getting up a little sympathy for the poor expatriated, and, it may be, virtually kidnapped little wanderer...His sheepskin coat, his blue jacket and red waistcoat, his little conical hat with its gay worsted trimmings proclaim his native home to be a far-away ultramontane region - somewhere about the Roman Campagna [of Italy], probably; not a desirable locality, it is true, for strangers to reside in, yet to revisit which one can imagine the little fellow may feel that longing of "homesickness" to which all wanderers are sometimes liable'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.