Rebecca Solomon (1832-1886). Print of a wood engraving of the original but untraced oil-painting, Spending a Sou. Print-maker, William Lusin Thomas. © The Trustees of the British Museum. Museum no. 1860,0714.1120. Museum's source: The Illustrated London News, 4 December 1858: 518. Image kindly released by the British Museum under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license. Image capture, text, and formatting by Jacqueline Banerjee.
The museum website describes the original painting as having been "first exhibited at the 'Sixth Annual Winter Exhibition' at the French Gallery, London in 1858–59 (no.114)," and the print itself as later having been "republished in 'L'Univers Illustré,' 28 June 1860, p.245 as 'La dépense d'un sou,' and accompanied by commentary by Marie Ferrié ('La dépense d'un sou', p.246)." The picture shows a market-woman shaded by a large umbrella, offering an item from a basket to a little girl, while a young woman spinner, and a well-grown boy, look on. It is a scene of everyday activity, with some other figures around and a hen (or rooster) pecking among the cobbles. The transaction involves only a small amount of money but the little girl looks longingly at the market-sellers' out-stretched hand, and the decision seems to be rather a big one. There is a degree of pathos in this. Birds are not the only ones needing to peck for what they can get.
Bibliography
Print. newspaper/periodical. British Museum. Web. 3 October 2021.
Created 3 October 2021