1848 – Home for the Holidays

One of our favourites for several reasons. This little known image is captioned “Home for the Holidays -Drawn by Weir” and is taken from the December 23rd, 1848 edition of the “Illustrated London News”. It is unique for several reasons, firstly, that it is clearly the earliest ‘christmas seasonal image’ created by Weir to appear in the “News” that we have found to date. Secondly, this piece also allows Weir to draw and elaborate on his connections to Lewes, for the theme he has chosen the coach delivering older school children who have been boarding in London for their education, back to their country homes, located anywhere between the line from London to Lewes in Sussex. Lewes is the town of Weir’s birth and the home of his early childhood. Once again, Weir is duly acknowledged in the caption, which did not start in the “News” until midway through 1847. Prior to that, only “H.W”. or “H.Weir del” appeared in the images themselves, and in many cases, no acknowledgement at all, making it very difficult to identify all his earliest newspaper work. This image features as a half-page image at the bottom of a page and holds its detail well. Accordingly we can offer the image currently in A4, A3 and A2 sizing options and we are looking at producing it in an A1 size in due course.