660. A Foundling Abandoned

At the beginning of the story of Daphnis and Chloe (which Ricketts and Shannon illustrated with wood-engravings), the two main characters are discovered individually as foundlings, one by goatherd Lamo, the other two years later by the shepherd Dryas. Both discoveries were sketched by Ricketts, but only the scene of Dryas finding Chloe after following a ewe into a sacred cave, was executed for the book. 

This scene provided an opportunity to depict Chloe's (and also Daphnis') special origin with a circular well and the interior of a cave with statues of three nymphs and a panel with a Greek inscription. 

This sacred space offered an appropriate, solemn beginning for a love story on Lesbos, more than the depiction of the landscape where Daphnis was found.

Charles Ricketts, pencil sketch, Lamo finding Daphnis
[British Library: 1946,0209.62]
(Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license)

Apparently it took Ricketts and Shannon a while to drop one of the two scenes, because Ricketts made (and kept) not only a pencil drawing of Lamo and Daphnis, but also an advanced sketch, pen and ink with black chalk, touched with white bodycolour. (Both have been pasted into an album and photographed somewhat askew).

Both, the pencil sketch (11.4 x 15.4 cm) and the drawing (9.6 x 12 cm), depict the shepherd in a rural landscape with some trees and the foundling in the lower right hand corner.

Charles Ricketts, drawing, Lamo finding Daphnis
[British Library: 1946,0209.63]
(Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license)