Description:
Woman's U-shaped, white cotton reticule or drawstring bag with a gathered ruffle on each side, as well as a gathered top ruffle when the bag is closed. There is an ink drawing on each side of the bag, a fashion of decorating that was popular in the first years of the 19th century. The drawing on one side depicts a drum, sheet of music, horn or cornucopia, and bells or pipes framed by moss-like branches. The other drawing depicts a thatched cottage in a country setting encircled by a border over an inscription: "A Cottage / Tis perched upon the green hiil up, / I called the low roofed lodge the peasant's nest / Cowper." These lines were excepted from "The Task, Book I, The Sofa" by English poetand hymnodist William Cowper (1731-1800). His major work was undertaken when his firend, Lady Austen, who was fond of blank verse, demanded a poem of that kind from Cowper, and encouraged him to write about the sofa in his parlor. First published in 1785, "The Task" grew into an opus of six books and nearly five thousand lines. Although the poem begins as a mock-heroic account of a wooden stool developing into a sofa, in later sections of the poem Cowper meditates on the immediate world around him (his village, garden, animals, and parlor) as well as larger religious and humanitarian concerns. His work found a wide audience; Samuel Taylor Coleridge called him "the best modern poet." His attention to nature and common life along with the foregrounding of his personal life prefigured the concerns of Romantic poets such as Wordsworth. William Cowper died of dropsy on April 25, 1800. At the time of his death, his Poems had already reached their tenth printing. The scene of the cottage is probably based on a contemporary print; there is a name inscribed in the lower right corner of the scene, which is difficult to read - "J. Beyden[?] ?."
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2000.20.8 |
