Quince, from "Quince" by Winthrop Mackworth Praed

Edwin Austin Abbey

1888 · Pen and ink on cardboard · Drawings and Prints

Abbey moved to England in 1878 to research illustrations to historical poems for Harper's and settled there permanently in 1883. This drawing is one of a series that responds to "Everyday Characters," poems by the British poet W. Mackworth Praed. We see the elderly bachelor Quince, a denizen of a West Country village, feeding his horse. The related stanza reads: For full ten years his pointer Speed Had couched beneath her master's table; For twice ten years his old white steed Had fattened in his master's stable; Old Quince averred, upon his troth, They were the ugliest beasts in Devon; And none knew why he fed them both, With his own hands, six days in seven. Reproduced as a wood engraving, the image appeared in Harper's "New Montly Magazine," vol. 79 (June 1886), p. 29.

Artist

Edwin Austin Abbey

Date

1888

Medium

Pen and ink on cardboard

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929