Mr. Goodall has a fine picture of "Hagar and Ishmael." The Egyptian bondswoman, bearing the not yet empty water-bottle, with her son, are seen hastening forward towards her native land through a sandy waste. She is still smarting with resentment against her persecutor, Sarah; she heeds not the boy at her side, who looks askance, terrified at a vulture alighting near them on the A full account of the design will bo found in Mr. Qullick's “Handbook for the Pictures at Westminster.” . . . But the pathetic sentiment of solitariness, which, rather than the expression or action of the figures, is the chief merit of the representation, is conveyed in the great expanse of wilderness stretching away in every direction, bounded only by no less desolate mountains, aud canopied by lowering clouds, which, hanging darkling in the evening sky, render more ominous the silent loneliness of the desert. We understand that this fine background was painted from a sketch actually made in the wilderness of Shur, not far, it may be, from the "Wilderness of Beersheba," mentioned in the patriarchal narrative: the mountains are part of the Attaka range.
Bibliography
“Exhibition at the Royal Academy.” The Illustrated London News. 48 (12 May 1866): 474. Hathi Digital Library Trust version of a copy in the University of Michigan Library. Web. 6 January 2016.
Created 7 January 2016