“The Quarrel” by Frederick Walker, A. R. A. (1862)

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The Quarrel

Fred Walker

1862

Wood-engraving by Joseph Swain

7 x 4½ inches

W. M. Thackeray, The Adventures of Philip, serialized in The Cornhill Magazine (1862).

[Click on image to enlarge it.]

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham

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Commentary: Simon Cooke

Walker’s illustrations are motivated, in short, by two concerns. They root the novel in the everyday of the 1860s and they provide a detailed psychological portrait of the protagonist. Both elements buttress and expand the novelist’s messages, arresting its digressive prose and focusing the reader/viewer’s attention on the crucial moments. In so doing they modernize Thackeray’s writing by severing the connection with the caricature traditions of the middle of the century, re-framing it with the emphasis on material and psychological realism that is characteristic, for example, of the fictions of George Eliot. In this novel, the poetic realism of the Sixties is put to new purposes, updating Thackeray’s social satire by shifting its emphasis towards the psychological and the emotional.

Walker’s interpretation of Thackeray’s text was the foundation stone of his career, and he went on to provide distinguished work for a number of novels and gift-books. [Illustrating Thackeray: Frederick Walker and Philip]

Bibliography

Thackeray, W. M. The Adventures of Philip, serialized in The Cornhill Magazine. London: Smith Elder, January 1861-August 1862.

Walker, Frederick. "The Quarrel." Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1862. Online version available from Wikimedia.org. Posted 9 October 2014. Web. 14July 2018.

Last modified 14 July 2018