3-071-009 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"Great Expectations" by W. D. Sadler, from the exhibition of the Society of British Artists, 1881. Engraving of a painting. 'Mr. W. D. Sadler, the rising young painter of this picture must surely be a devotee of the "gentle" art, a disciple of Isaac Walton. Several times, now, has he presented to us the watchful and wary, the patient and imperturbable old angler waiting for his bite under all sorts of unfavourable and discouraging conditions...Or, rather, is not the artist a renegade from the cultus of the rod and a traitor to its mysteries... So ludicrous does he make its votaries appear sometimes that one cannot help recalling the well-known definition - by whom was it? - of angling - "a rod with a worm at one end and a fool at the other". Be this as it may, we confess that we rather sympathise on this occasion with the fisher. He is displaying qualities which, otherwise directed, constitute heroism and achieve victory. His "great expectations" may end in little here, his patience may have as futile an end as often have the "law's delays;" but, as a rule, the man who has the "staying power" to bide his time is he who finally wins in the race of life'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.