In a Tavern, Illustration for "Phillada Flouts Me"

Edwin Austin Abbey

1886 · Pen and ink on cardboard · Drawings and Prints

This is one of a series that Abbey drew for Harper's to illustrate the anonymous seventeenth century English poem "Phillada Flouts Me." In the verse, the narrator grows increasingly depressed as the young woman he desires ignores him. Here we see the young man entering a tavern where a more successful and sophisticated rival raises a glass. The related stanza reads: I woo'd her for to dine, But could not get her; Will had her to the wine– He might entreat her. With Daniel she did dance, On me she look'd askance: Oh, thrice unhappy chance! Phillada flouts me. A wood engraving after Abbey's drawing appeared in Harper's "New Monthly Magazine," vol. 75 (July 1887), p. 165 and in the book "Old Songs, with drawings by Edwin A. Abbey & Alfred Parsons," 1889 (see MMA 21.36.112).

Artist

Edwin Austin Abbey

Date

1886

Medium

Pen and ink on cardboard

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

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