Evangeline

Thomas Faed 1826 - 1900

Summary

A full-length, left-side portrait of Evangeline, a young woman with her thick dark hair pulled back, wearing a long pale grey dress and red cloak. She is seated on a stone bench, her body turned slightly away from the viewer, with her hands clasped in her lap, and her head turned slightly over her shoulder looking off to the left. She is placed in a desolate, highland landscape setting with a stone cross in the background to the right - perhaps somebodys gravestone.

Display Label

Evangeline about 1855 Thomas Faed 1826 - 1900 Oil on canvas This painting was inspired by Longfellow’s poem Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie,1847, set during the colonisation of North America. Acadie, now Nova Scotia, is a province of Canada. Evangeline’s lover, Gabriel, was seized by the British and deported for aiding the French. She spent the rest of her life searching for him, only to find him on his deathbed. Here she sits mournfully by an unnamed tombstone, imagining that it is Gabriel’s grave and longing to be with him. Far below is a coastline intended to be Canadian. James Gresham bequest 1917.256