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Commentary: Walker's Oil-painting and The Child representing Spring in A Round of Days (1866)

In this 1864 water-colour, Walker follows the tenets of the new school of Idyllism (link) 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. As was the case with The Vagrants and many of Walker's other oils and water-colours, he used a wood-engraving — Spring Days — as the basis for the composition.

Walker has completely altered the juxtaposition of the principal figure in the engraving, the female flower-gatherer (foreground, left), and her companion, the boy with his back towards us (right, rear), which in the original drawing would have been reversed, as in the canvas. In the painting, the boy is gathering blossoms, and the shoots through which the girl passes are pussy-willows. Various shades of green clarify that the setting is a springtime heath. Walker brings the natural backdrop slightly forward in the painting, reducing the size of the flower-gatherer relative to the verdant foreground, but he also has reduced the scale of the two trees on the horizon, thereby creating a greater sense of depth. Finally, the conifer that appears prominently to the right of centre behind the girl in the engraving has disappeared, replaced by one of the two deciduous trees. With the addition of colour, Walker makes it clear that the girl is looking for the blossoms at the foot of the pussy-willow, down right, and that the boy is holding a bouquet of wild-flowers.

Walker's Four Seasons from A Round of Days Described in Original Poems (1866)

Left to right: Spring, Autumn Days, Summer Days, Winter Days. [Click on images to enlarge them.]

Bibliography

Muir, Percy. Chapter 6, "The Dalziel Era." Victorian Illustrated Books. London: B. T. Batsford, 1971. Pp. 129-148.

Phillips, Claude. Fred Walker and His Works. London: Seeley & Co., 1894, rpt. 1905.

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.

Walker, Frederick. Spring, rpt. in Gleeson White's English Illustration — The Sixties: 1855-70. London: Archibald Constable, 1906.

Walker, Fred. "Spring" from the Victoria and Albert Museum. Online version available from www.flickr.com. Web. 8 August 2018.

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Last modified 7 August 2018