A Girl Reading In A Sailing Boat (1869) by Alfred Corbould

Readers reading #1

A Girl Reading In A Sailing Boat (1869) By Alfred Corbould (1852 – 1920).

A Girl Reading In A Sailing Boat (1869) by Alfred Chantrey Corbould (1852-1920). Looking at those dates, it makes the artist about 17 years old when he painted this lovely work. Alfred came from a long line of artists – the most well known are Henry Corbould  (1787–1844) and Henry’s oldest son Edward Henry (1815–1905).

This is the first in a series of posts on art showing “readers reading“. It is a subject that always captures my attention whenever I’m in an art gallery or viewing images. There is something delightful about seeing other people read – perhaps it’s that you know they are probably in a better or more interesting place. I always want to know what they reading.

As regards this painting, there is no way of knowing for sure what the girl is reading, but we do know what titles were published in 1869. Here are a selection:

Fiction

• Louisa May Alcott – Good Wives
• D. Blackmore – Lorna Doone [On my reading list]
  
• Fyodor Dostoyevsky –  The Idiot (Trans: Идіотъ)
• Gustave Flaubert – Sentimental Education (Trans: L’Éducation sentimentale)
  
• Victor Hugo – The Man Who Laughs (Trans: L’Homme qui rit)
• Sheridan Le Fanu – The Wyvern Mystery
• Leo Tolstoy – War and Peace [On my reading list]
  

Non-fiction

•  Matthew Arnold – Culture and Anarchy
• Warren Felt Evans – The Mental Cure, illustrating the influence of the Mind on the Body
• William Ewart Gladstone – Juventus Mundi: The gods and men of “the heroic” age
• John Stuart Mill – The Subjection of Women
• Mark Twain – The Innocents Abroad
• Richard Wagner – Jewishness in Music (Trans: Das Judenthum in der Musik)

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The ‘Readers reading’ series on this blog (this list last updated, 12th March 2017).

Readers reading #1. A Girl Reading In A Sailing Boat (1869) By Alfred Corbould.

Readers reading #2 The Bookworm (1850) Carl Spitzweg.

Readers reading #3 A Pleasant Corner (1865) – By John Callcott Horsley.

Readers reading #4 The Novel Reading (1841) – By Josef Danhauser.

Readers reading #5 The Poor Poet (1839) – By Carl Spitzweg.

Readers reading #6 The Travelling Companions (1862) – By Augustus Egg.

Readers reading #7 The Breakfast (c.1911) – By William McGregor Paxton.

Readers reading #8 Answering the Emigrant’s Letter (1850) – By James Collinson.

Readers reading #9 The Love Letter (1808) – By Willem Bartel van der Kooi.

Readers reading #10 The Day Dream (1880) – By Dante Gabriel Rossetti.