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Spring Days
Fred Walker
1866
Wood-engraving by the Dalziels
height 16.2 cm x width 12.1 cm
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham
Although Walker is now principally remembered as an Idyllist painter, he provided six seasonal drawings (such as Summer Days) for the Dalziel brothers (George, Edward, and Thomas) which appeared in two poetry books, A Round of Days Described in Original Poems (1866) and Wayside Posies; Original Poems of Country Life (1874).
Walker produced six illustrations, including Spring Days, Summer Days, and Autumn Days (1866), for a popular, highly illustrated poetry book, A Round of Days (cover design), . His engravers and publishers, the Dalziel brothers, described this book as a compendium of "every-day scenes, occurrences and incidents." So successful were sales of the volume of idyllic illustrations that the Dalziels re-issued parts of the original book as Pictures Posies (1874) and English Rustic Pictures (1882). Walker's vernal illustration, inspired by a poem by Dora Greenwell, reveals the influence of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in its realisation of naturalistic details and dense composition.
Percy Muir explains that the Dalziel brothers commissioned the illustrations by Walker that ended up in A Round of Days for a companion volume “to Birket Foster's English Landscape and all the drawings were to have been by Walker” (). When he completed only eleven, they used them for the 1866 volume and Wayside Posies (1867). George Pinwell (1842-75) contributed seventeen illustrations, but “both it and Wayside Posies (1867) have a further glory for the 24 beautiful drawings by J. W. North, five in the first and 19 in the second. These include some of his best work” (141-42).
Walker follows the new school of Idyllism by representing spring as a pretty, thoughtful child holding a bouquet of wild flowers rather than as a classical goddess. He has adjusts the backdrop so that instead of a lush Italian landscape he presents an English heath just beginning to flower. The child, dressed in decorous Victorian black, holds aloft her flowers in preparation for popping them into her collection bag, warily avoiding getting caught up in the brambles (left). The leafless deciduous trees contrast the young evergreen, and much of the surrounding landscape has yet to experience new growth, implying that the artist has set the scene in the month of April rather than May.
All four parts of Walker's Round of Days achieve the Pre-Raphaelite beauty of human form and natural backdrop, although the built environment looms larger in the final panel celebrating winter. Spring Days, combines a complex description of the outdoor setting with an exquisitely drawn child picking flowers. The wistfulness of the female apple-picker in Autumn Days likewise suggests an inner life, subtly engaging the viewer with a sense of col tempo. On the other hand, the remaining seasons in the sequence, which lack this emotional intensity, instead focus on childhood activity. Walker has balanced the set with complementary portraits of two girls in stasis and two boys in action. Whereas the personification of Spring pauses in her gathering of flowers and Autumn directly regards the viewer, the boys, who represent Summer and Winter, engage completely in their seasonal activities, swimming in a pond lined with reeds in Summer Days, and testing the ice made by the dripping of the water upon the ground in Winter Days. Thus, the young males seem to represent a life of action, and the females a life of contemplation, although the boy on the bank in Summer Days momentarily pauses as he considers diving in, and the child outdoors in the cold air in Winter Days is tentative in stepping on the icy ground.
Left: The engaging fall scene of childhood associated with a rural setting: Autumn Days. Centre: Walker's depicting boys swimming in a narrative illustration: Summer Days (1910). Right: Walker offers a charming boyhood vignette for the coldest season: Winter Days (1866). [Click on images to enlarge them.]
Muir, Percy. Chapter 6, "The Dalziel Era." Victorian Illustrated Books. London: B. T. Batsford, 1971. Pp. 129-148.
Walker, Fred. "Spring Days" from the Tate Britain Collection. Google Arts and Culture, 1866. Online version available from The Tate Britain. Web. 11 July 2018.
Last modified 11 July 2018