In 1893, one of the books Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon jointly provided with wood-engravings was published, Daphnis and Chloe. The story by Longus is set on the Greek island of Lesbos. The thirty-seven scenes depicted (one of which appears as a publisher's emblem in the colophon) are largely set outdoors. There is one print with a simultaneous indoor and outdoor scene (as in a Japanese drawing) and there are ten that take place entirely indoors.
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| Charles Ricketts, sketch for a wood-engraving for Daphnis and Chloe (not executed) [British Museum, London: 1946,0209.59: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license] |
The British Museum preserves some sketches that were not executed in wood-engraving. One is described as: 'whole-length figure sitting in a room, broom propped against adjacent wall. c.1893'. It is a pen and ink drawing, touched with white bodycolour, 10,4 x 12,3 cm.
Of the remaining sketches, this is the only one that also takes place indoors, although on the right we look out through an open door. A basket hangs on the wall to the right. The only drama in this sketch is the leaves swirling in as a contrast to the tired-looking woman.
This autumnal scene was apparently rejected for the book but, remarkably, Ricketts kept the sketch in a scrapbook.
