"Winter" Needlework Picture

In February of 1819, when Hannah Jane Robinson (1807-1890) completed this needlework picture at her aunt Elizabeth Robinson’s school, she must have been longing for the arrival of spring in the way most people do in February. Above her charming composition of a dog standing in a bare field looking towards a snug house surrounded with leafless trees, Hannah has embroidered a verse that reads: “SEE, how rude winter’s icy hand/Has stripp’d the trees and sealed the ground;/ But spring shall soon his rage withstand,/And spread new beauties all around.” The verse is excerpted from a hymn entitled “Winter” that was published in England in 1779 as one of the Olney Hymns by well-known evangelical Christian minister John Henry Newton (1725-1807). In its entirety, the hymn speaks of the soul’s longing to accept Jesus. But Hannah has simply focused on a much more universal wish for spring to arrive after the long winter months.

For more information, see catalogue entry below.