MITFORD, Mary Russell.

£1,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

An upright, downright, English Yeoman. 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."

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