3-034-799 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"The Village Gossip," by H. S. Marks, A.R.A., from the exhibition in the Dudley Gallery, 1871. Engraving of a painting. 'A very pleasant sample this of those genial illustrations of Old English character and life with which...Mr. H. S. Marks has become agreeably identified. Few of our painters are so felicitous in seizing droll and humorous points of physiognomical character and expression. This is the artist's forte...People say, perhaps with truth, that nobody has any character nowadays...We are all getting rubbed down to one pattern by the constant friction of our modern civilisation, like pebbles on a seashore...Mr. Marks instinctively turns to Shakspearean times to find scope for his special faculty. Here, accordingly, is a village gaffer of the Elizabethan days of merrie England - the very type of garrulousness, standing there at a settled halt, deliberately leaning on his staff. There is no train to catch, so why should he hurry? His memory is crammed with the small news of the village...He is a living broadside, before newspapers came into being. And the wayside tavern-keeper, listening so amusedly, will, we suspect, ripen into something very like him in process of time and with adequate loss of teeth'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.