Editorial Comment for this plate:

“POET AND PEASANT.”

Our photogravure illustration this week is from the well-known engraving. It has a valuable lesson to teach landscape photographers, especially in regard to the introduction of figures in a natural scene. Nothing can be better in its way than this pastoral landscape, and there is nothing in the picture that a photographer could not make with his camera. (p. 37)

This is an engraving from an original painting of the same name dating to 1887 by British artist Henry John Yeend King. (1855 – 1924) The work, an oil on canvas, is held by the Reading Museum in England.

Yeend King was born in London and spent his early working life as an apprentice to O’Connor, whose glass making business was in Berners Street, Marylebone. In the latter half of the 19th century, Marylebone was considered London’s ‘artistic quarter’ and the presence of so many artists’ sutdios no doubt tempted him to change career. He studied first with William Bromley, the genre artist, and later in Paris with Leon Bonnat and Fernand Cormon, both professors at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. The robust plein-air technique then prevelant in France influenced his art, and on his return to England he chose to specialist in landscapes and depictions of rustic genre.  – Christie’s Auction House biography