Oil painting entitled 'The Dawn of Love' by Thomas Brooks. Great Britain, 1846.

Painting, oil on canvas. By a spring in the fresh Highland countryside, the young man has just declared his love and proposed marriage, and the lass, 'Jeannie fair', has accepted. The timid and hesitant natures of both boy and girl are delightfully expressed, and the picture's simple directness, which perfectly matches that of Burns' verse, make this one of the most affecting images of rustic courtship in nineteenth-century art. Signed and dated by the artist.

Given by Christopher Pearse

Given by Christopher Pearse, 1864
Like the painting by Duncan (cat.no.74), this has an extrinsic reference provided by a literary quotation instead of a title (it only became known as The Dawn of Love in later years) in the 1846 exhibition catalogue, in the form of lines from a poem by Robert Burns, 'There was a lass'.
O Jeannie fair, I love you dear;
O can you think to fancy me?
Will you leave your mother's home
And learn to tend the farms with me?
Now what could artless Jeannie do?
She had no wish to say no;
At length she blushed a sweet consent,
And love was ever between them.
By a spring in the fresh Highland countryside, the young man has just declared his love and proposed marriage, and the lass, 'Jeannie fair', has accepted. The timid and hesitant natures of both boy and girl are delightfully expressed, and the picture's simple directness, which perfectly matches that of Burns' verse, make this one of the most affecting images of rustic courtship in nineteenth-century art.

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