Illustration to a Pastoral Poem by Herrick

Edwin Austin Abbey

1870–1911 · Pen and ink · Drawings and Prints

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.

Artist

Edwin Austin Abbey

Date

1870–1911

Medium

Pen and ink

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Rogers Fund, 1912, transferred from American