The Pied Piper by Elizabeth Adela Forbes (née Armstrong), ARWS (1859-1912). Pastel on paper, H 104 x W 149 cm. Collection: Penlee House Gallery and Museum, accession number: PEZPH: 2003.16 (no date given). Kindly made available on Art UK on the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives licence (CC BY-ND).
Forbes has conveyed the sense of onward movement, propulsion even, brilliantly here. Children of all ages are being swept down a woodland bank, away from the open sky and into the dark shadows, ineluctably drawn by the magical music. Some of them clasp their hands in rapture. In his long cloak and elfin red hat, the pied piper plays on, seeming to glance behind him, satisfied no doubt by the effect his music is having. Kate Greenaway had illustrated Browning's Pied Piper of Hamelin in 1889 (see her frontispiece); Forbes's take on it here is filled with foreboding.
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Image acquisition, text and formatting by Jacqueline Banerjee. You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.
Bibliography
Birch, Mrs Lionel. Stanhope A. Forbes, ARA, and Elizabeth Stanhope Forbes, ARWS. London: Cassell, 1906. Internet Archive. Contributed by the Kahl/Austin Foundation. Web. 27 February 2021.
Created 7 March 2021