Art

The original illustration, signed by the artist, for one of the character portraits in Mary Russell Mitford's "Our Village", which comprised a series of sketches of country life. Brock's illustrations form part of the "Series of English Idylls" published by J. M. Dent & Co. The figure depicted is a classic English archetype, Farmer Thorpe, "a stout, square, sturdy personage of fifty, or there-about, with a hard weather-beaten countenance, of that peculiar vermilion, all over alike, into which the action of the sun and wind sometimes tans a fair complexion; sharp, shrewd features, and a keen grey eye. He looks completely like a man who will neither cheat nor be cheated." Original pen-and-ink watercolour illustration (404 x 288 mm), in a wash-line mount. Margins faintly marked, with chips to edges, image bright and clean, in very good condition.