’I used to keep my master’s pigs’
Randolph Caldecott
1881
Coloured wood-engraving engraved by Edmund Evans
7¾ x 6 ¾ inches
Illustration in The Farmer’s Boy, 11.
Caldecott’s vision of the imagined Regency past embraces the working classes. This image is an example of an idealized ruralism, with the smock-wearing peasant boy looking after the pigs in what is the ultimate free-range environment – an English idyll which is completely uninformed with any awareness of the facts of rural poverty. Interestingly, the Master’s presence is signalled by the estate wall – with the owner’s property shown in the landscape, and his human and animal stock in the foreground. For all that, Caldecott’s illustration is a superb piece of child-like imagery, a picture of innocence in which the pigs are delightfully individualized.
Scanned image and text by Simon Cooke. [Click on image to enlarge it, and mouse over the text for links.]