summer indolence

This arrived today!  And proved absolutely impossible to photograph without reflections, until I turned out all the lights and tried a very long exposure.  So the etching is actually sharper than this suggests - indeed, very delicate.  It was a very happy eBay find: a Millais etching from 1861, entitled "Summer Indolence".  Here's a clearer image of it, from the print in the Art Institute of Chicago's collection.

A printed version appeared in Passages from Modern English Poets Illustrated by the Junior Etching Club (1861), and the figure was modeled by Alice Elizabeth Gray, a younger sister of Millais's wife Effie (she's the one on the left in Autumn Leaves).  And you've seen her before in this pose!  Here she is in Apple Blossoms, on the right hand side:

But the etching completely lacks that ominous scythe, suggesting the frailty of grass, flesh, and young ladies who chew grass stems in a provocative way.

This seemed especially apt today, since the USPS delivered it just after I'd finished talking about Millais (admittedly in the context of pheasant and duck shooting and salmon fishing, and rewilding of Scottish moors, not apple orchards) on the first day of the (alas, virtual) NAVSA conference.  Ever so many thanks to those of you who came!