"Why then begin..." illustration to "A Bucolick or Discourse of Neatherds"
Edwin Austin Abbey American
Related author Robert Herrick British
Not on view
Abbey here represents two cowherds (or neatherds) engaged in a musical competition. One sits on the ground and plays his recorder while the other waits to follow with a song. Lallager, a woman herder ensconced on a rustic stile, acts a judge.
In 1878, Harper & Brother sent Abbey to England to research and illustrate verses by the seventeeth-century lyric poet Robert Herrick. Wood engravings based on the artist's drawings began to appear in Harper's "New Monthly Magazine" later that year, and a group were then published in "Selections from the Poetry of Robert Herrick" (New York and London, 1882; MMA 23.78). This design responds to Herrick's "Bucolick, or Discourse of Neatherds," with the related series of illustrations found in the book.
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