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GOD'S ACRE. Artist: Miss E. Osborn ____________ Engraver: H. Bourne |
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FROM THE ORIGINAL DESCRIPTION: Few who visited Mr. Wallis's "Winter Exhibition" in Pall Mall, in. 1866, did, it may be presumed, pass by unheeded Miss Osborn's touching little picture here engraved. The subject is just one of those which, whatever artistic merits the canvas might possess, would at once arrest the attention and invite examination. Such an appeal as it makes to the tenderest sympathies of our nature could not fail to be irresistible; and the heart must indeed be insensible which could not sympathise with the two .young girls who have faced the bitter north wind and the heavy snow- fall to pay, perhaps, their daily visit to a mother's grave. It is no forced sentiment that such a picture calls into action; we recognise in it a principle not uncommon with the brute creation, which is often found in the lower animals, and which is the key-stone, as it were, to all human affections where they have not been blunted or hardened by ignorance or vice.
Miss Osborn passes much of her time in Germany, and many of her pictures are drawn from the inhabitants and scenes of that country. That we now introduce is evidently one of them; the crosses adorned with immortelles bespeak continental customs as do also the dresses of the peasant children, one of whom carries a wreath of flowers to decorate the grave of the dead. With true poetical instinct the artist has represented the incident portrayed ' as occurring in the depth of winter; symbolical, it might be, of the joylessness and sense of abandonment in the hearts of the young mourners as they trudge along the snow-covered ground to fulfil a sacred duty. The only sign of warmth in the picture is seen in the umbrella, which is painted red. Churchyard scenes, and of this type, are common enough in our exhibition rooms, but they generally are shown us when daisies are springing up amid the grass, and the yew-trees have 'put forth their bright green terminal shoots, or the elm has thrown its broad shadow over the turf-mounds and gravel path, and the starlings have built their nests in the ancient grey church tower. Miss Osborn has produced a new version of an old theme, and one not more novel than it is impressive. We very much misjudge the taste of our subscribers and of the public if this engraving be not more than ordinarily popular. The title of the picture, moreover, is happily chosen: ' God's Acre ' is a term which of late years has grown into use among writers. It was, if we mistake not, Longfellow's plaintive and beautiful lyric bearing that name which brought it into fashion:-
"I like that ancient Saxon phrase which calls
The burial-ground Grod'8 Acre! It is just;
It consecrates each grave within its walls,
And breathes a benison o'er the sleeping dust.
''God's Acre! Yes, that blessed name imparts
Comfort to those who in the grave have sown
The seed that they have garnered in their hearts,
Their bread of life; alas! no more their own.
"With thy rude ploughshare, Death, turn up the sod,
And spread the furrow for the seed we sow;
This is the field and Acre of our God,
This is the place where human harvests grow."
The picture is of cabinet size, and is very carefully executed. Mr. Bourne, who engraved it, has done full justice to the artist's work.
Please note: the terms used in our auctions for engraving, etching, lithograph, plate, photogravure etc. are ALL prints on paper, and NOT blocks of steel or wood or any other material. "ENGRAVINGS", the term commonly used for these paper prints, were the most common method in the 1700s and 1800s for illustrating old books, and these paper prints or "engravings" were created by the intaglio process of etching the negative of the image into a block of steel, copper, wood etc, and then when inked and pressed onto paper, a print image was created. These prints or engravings were usually inserted into books, although many were also printed and issued as loose stand alone lithographs. They often had a tissue guard or onion skin frontis to protect them from transferring their ink to the opposite page and were usually on much thicker quality woven rag stock paper than the regular prints. So this auction is for an antique paper print(s), probably from an old book, of very high quality and usually on very thick rag stock paper.