A Victorian colour print, using the technique of chromolithography, that reproduces, for the purpose of publication, a painting by the artist Thomas Webster R.A. (1800-1886). The oil painting is in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. It was painted and exhibited in 1844, bought by the collector John Sheepshanks, and presented by him to the South Kensington Museum (subsequently the V&A) in 1857. At that time the South Kensington Museum was the national collection of British art, and Sheepshanks, a member of a Leeds-based cloth-manufacturing family, gave it his collection in order to show young British artists examples of art to be emulated; later, the Tate Gallery claimed the role of national collection of British art. Webster's paintings show the tranquil and pleasant aspects of rustic life, for the benefit of city-dwellers. Here an aged woman gets on with her knitting while her cat sits in front of the fire and her Bible rests on the table to her right. In front of her, four children sit in a shaft of sunlight and enjoy the competitive amusement of trying to blow in the opposite direction a sailing-boat which they have constructed of wood and paper. Many features of the composition are designed to provide reassurance about the wellbeing of the rural poor
