A wide range of animals was depicted in drawings, lithographs, woodcuts and paintings by Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon, including geese, a stag, a bear, fishes, doves, seagulls, dogs and cats, pigs, mice, bulls, peacocks, dolphins, hares, mammoths, and rabbits. Some of these could be observed in woods or parks.
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| Two hares, drawn by Charles Ricketts (from Atalanta, June 1890, p. [545]) |
In his diary Ricketts wrote, 13 May 1901 (Self-Portrait 1939, p. 56):
In the Park an exquisite thing occurred: a young rabbit plunged, not into a hole, at the sight of me, but into the bole of a may-tree. There I tickled him, meaning to take him out, till I feared, from the palpitating of his flanks, that he might faint or die; so I stood off, to see him escape. This, however, he would not do, so I plucked up courage and lifted him out by the scruff of his neck from the dark inner hole where he had been hiding his face. I remember the fantastic sensation of his loose soft skin and huge startled eyes before he escaped into the bracken shoots, to look back at the enemy.
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| 'Spring', a tailpiece (detail) (from The magazine of art, April 1891, p. 204) |
A tailpiece, 'Spring', drawn in 1891 for
The magazine of art illustrates a child with his playmate, a rabbit.
