3-070-826 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"Happy be thy Dreams!" by F. Dadd, 1881. Engraving of a painting. 'The quiet drollery of this picture, in which an elderly gentleman of a past generation, who has come to the river's bank intent on the gentle pastime of Isaac Walton, is fairly caught napping by a party of presumptuous little pigs, will afford the reader some little amusement. There is every appearance that the sleeper, fatigued with his labours of the fishing-rod, and with the heat of a summer afternoon, has involuntarily fallen into a brief state of blessed oblivion, leaving his fishing-basket, with the proceeds of his skill, to the rapacious attack of those unconscionable four-footed gluttons. He will be considerably surprised at waking, roused by the parting grunt of the nearest porker, to find that he has been so impudently robbed of the fine roach which he had intended to carry home as trophies of his dexterity in the angler's art. The situation is decidedly laughable, and its humour is well expressed in this pleasant work of Mr. F. Dadd's, which was in the Dudley Gallery exhibition of water-colour drawings'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.