3-043-832 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"A Highland Pastoral", by P. R. Morris, in the exhibition of the Royal Academy, 1872. Engraving of a painting. 'The scene is a Highland dell, embosomed among and screened by trees. It is a fine day in early spring, and the sunlight, glinting through the tree stems and foliage, stripes the undulations of the upper path to the dell. The spring flowers bloom, as they only will in such a place - in profuse clusters of lovely yellow, and blue, and violet over the graves where the leaves of many summers have drifted and died. Here, types also of rejuvenescence, and health, and joy, a happy little party of Highland lassies and children, with an infant, have collected; and here, again emblematical of young life and innocence, lambs have strayed, or perhaps have followed the children - as lambs will do, especially if, having been found weakly after birth, they have been more carefully protected in the shepherd's homestead. The subject, as we have said, is simple enough; yet by the painter's treatment, by the beauty of the group, the gracefulness of the incident, the pleasantness of the scene, and the associations which the whole is calculated to awaken, it acquires a poetic charm of pure idyllic sentiment'. From "Illustrated London News", 1872.