Cattle in shade

Harrison Weir

1858

Wood engraving by the Dalziel Brothers.

4¾ x 3¾ inches

Illustration for Summer Time in the Country, p.93.

Weir’s version of the picturesque convention in which cattle are positioned in the foreground and treated ornamentally. In this design the artist makes the cows into the subject, with the landscape reduced to the status of a background. However, Weir’s treatment of the natural world is interesting: he shows the field as rough and untamed, and does not treat his landscape in the conventional way favoured by contemporaries such as Myles Birket Foster.

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