"The bird to others flew," illustration to "A Love Song"

"The bird to others flew," illustration to "A Love Song"

Edwin Austin Abbey

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Abbey moved to England in 1878 to research and produce illustrations to historical verse for Harper's and settled there permanently in 1883. This drawing comes from a series that responds to "A Love Song" by the British seveenth-century poet George Wither. Two men sit beside a young woman on a bench near a river– with the downcast figure at left representing the narrator who bemoans love's inconstancy in the related text: 'Twas I that paid for all things, 'Twas others dranke the wine; I cannot now recall things, Live but a foole to pine: 'Twas I that beat the bush, The bird to others flew; For she, alasse! hath left me. Reproduced as a wood engraving, the image appeared in Harper's "New Montly Magazine," vol. 75, no. 449, October 1887, p. 745 and in "Old Songs, with Drawings by Edwin A. Abbey & Alfred Parsons," Harper & Brothers, 1889 (see MMA 21.36.112), p. 12.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

"The bird to others flew," illustration to "A Love Song""The bird to others flew," illustration to "A Love Song""The bird to others flew," illustration to "A Love Song""The bird to others flew," illustration to "A Love Song""The bird to others flew," illustration to "A Love Song"

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.