To show your tight ankles

Hugh Thomson

1906

Photomechanical reproduction of a watercolour

4¾ x 3½ inches.

George Eliot, Scenes of Clerical Life, pictorial frontispiece.

Janet walking down the street. The idealised costumes and architecture are typical of Thomson’s representation of the English idyll – a fantasy notion of pre-industrial purity that never existed and has since hardened into a visual cliché in the pages of tourist brochures.

Scanned image and text by Simon Cooke.

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