3-034-577 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"A Breton Girl - Evening," by F. J. Skill, 1871. Engraving from a water-colour drawing by Mr. F. J. Skill, '...who has recently been elected an Associate of the Institute of Painters in Water Colours. Mr. Skill is one of the numerous engravers and draughtsmen on wood who, in recent years, have turned their attention to watercolour painting with conspicuous success. His works are distinguished by much originality of feeling and observation, and by a delicately artistic style of execution...The artist has been painting in Brittany for some considerable time, and this is, doubtless, a study from nature made "on the spot." The little figure before us has the facial characteristics of a true Bretonne, though softened by the plumpness of childhood. There are the large lustrous eyes, the dark elfin locks, and the peculiar piquancy of the Celtic type...As she grows to womanhood her costume will partake more of the local picturesqueness. She is simply a little field-labourer resting after the day's toil, with her bare feet ankle-deep in the long grass and wild flowers, leaning, with drooping hands and crossed legs, against a beech stem, lithe and graceful like herself, and with, the sunset sky forming a sort of halo round her comely little head'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.