Fraternal Assistance, from "Illustrated London News"
The "Illustrated London News" regularly informed readers of interesting works in current exhibitions, in this case engraving a German painting shown at the Dublin International Exhibition of 1865. Boser was known for painting working class children in humble interiors and here shows a brother helping a younger sister with her lessons. The traditional costumes, host of detail and sense of story were praised at length in a related text:
"This picture by the Dusseldorf artist F. Boser, arrests the eye disposed to skim over the numerous academic, or more or less artificial, works surrounding it, by virtue of its fine tone, perfect naturalness, and a certain spirit of freshness rather unusual among foreign pictures. Nothing can be more simply natural or descriptive than the expressions of these little folk. The good housewife, whose multifarious duties, in addition to superintending her little daughter's education, are indicated by the half peeled potato, the pincushion and scissors, the ball of kitting worsted, and other articles in this humble interior, to say nothing of the birch, doubtless in terror merely stuck behind the looking glass–the housewife, we say, has evidently set the little girl too hard a sum. So, in the absense of the mamma, there is perhaps a little innocent roguery going on. The little maiden appeals for assistance to her brother, who is mind you, an old and profound mathematician (at least a year older than herself), and has prosecuted his studies at some seminary of learning in or near the village. This wise brother then comes and sits down on her stool, and, smiling at the notion that she should find difficulty in it, at once kindly solves the problem; nay, more, he condescendingly explains its solution, while the little girl, listening reverentially and looking aside in deep abstraction, seems on the very point of apprehending the abtruse demonstrations of her instructor."
"This picture by the Dusseldorf artist F. Boser, arrests the eye disposed to skim over the numerous academic, or more or less artificial, works surrounding it, by virtue of its fine tone, perfect naturalness, and a certain spirit of freshness rather unusual among foreign pictures. Nothing can be more simply natural or descriptive than the expressions of these little folk. The good housewife, whose multifarious duties, in addition to superintending her little daughter's education, are indicated by the half peeled potato, the pincushion and scissors, the ball of kitting worsted, and other articles in this humble interior, to say nothing of the birch, doubtless in terror merely stuck behind the looking glass–the housewife, we say, has evidently set the little girl too hard a sum. So, in the absense of the mamma, there is perhaps a little innocent roguery going on. The little maiden appeals for assistance to her brother, who is mind you, an old and profound mathematician (at least a year older than herself), and has prosecuted his studies at some seminary of learning in or near the village. This wise brother then comes and sits down on her stool, and, smiling at the notion that she should find difficulty in it, at once kindly solves the problem; nay, more, he condescendingly explains its solution, while the little girl, listening reverentially and looking aside in deep abstraction, seems on the very point of apprehending the abtruse demonstrations of her instructor."
Artwork Details
- Title: Fraternal Assistance, from "Illustrated London News"
- Series/Portfolio: Illustrated London News
- Engraver: Mason Jackson (British, Ovingham, Northumberland 1819–1903 London)
- Artist: After Friedrich Boser (German, Halbau, Poland 1809–1881 Düsseldorf)
- Date: August 19, 1865
- Medium: Wood engraving
- Dimensions: Sheet: 3 3/16 × 1 3/4 in. (8.1 × 4.4 cm)
- Classification: Prints
- Credit Line: Gift of Donato Esposito, 2019
- Object Number: 2019.279.14
- Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints
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