Woman and Little Girl with Green Pail, Antique Ackermann Costume Print, 1817

An original antique engraving, colored by hand, from Miss Semple's The Costume of the Netherlands, lettered "Woman and little Girl". A young woman in a white cap and a long pale cape striped faintly in pink stands with her hands clasped, looking down at a small girl. Under the cape she wears a brown bodice, a pale blue apron and a brown skirt. The child is seen from behind, in a broad straw hat trimmed with blue ribbons, with long blue strings hanging down her back, an orange brown jacket with dark spots and a full rose pink skirt, and she carries a green pail at her side. The two figures stand on open ground with a cast shadow and a small tuft of plants at the right.

The caption is engraved in script below the image as "Woman and little Girl", and beneath it is the publisher's imprint "Publish'd March 1, 1817, at R. Ackermann's, 101 Strand." No artist's or engraver's name is lettered on the plate; the drawings for the series are credited to Miss Semple on the title of the work.

The plate belongs to The Costume of the Netherlands, published in 1817 at Rudolph Ackermann's Repository of Arts, 101 Strand, London. The title of the work describes it as displayed in thirty colored engravings after drawings from nature by Miss Semple, with descriptions in English and French. Its figures cover the Dutch provinces, Flanders and Brabant, and the French border country around Valenciennes, each shown in everyday working or market dress rather than in formal portraiture. Ackermann issued many of the best known illustrated books of Regency London, and the plates of this work were colored by hand after printing.

The figure sits well in a simple narrow frame with a wide mount, and plates from the same work make a coherent group on one wall.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.