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Notes: Myles Birket Foster was one of the most distinctive and original of all Victorian painters of landscape and genre subjects. Of all his subject matter, perhaps the most charming are those which depict pastoral scenes of children and young women involved in outdoor activities such as picking berries or merely playing games in the English countryside.

In the present work, we see a group of young women and children affectionately teaching a young enfant how to walk. In the background a shepherd herds his flock of sheep- the whole image conjuring up a wonderfully tranquil vision of rural England. As James Dafforne wrote of these representations of the countryside,

the rustic figures that give additional life to the landscape are just of that order which chimes in with all our associations of the country; children gathering primroses, or making bouquets of wild-flowers, catching minnows in the brook, romping in hay-fields, nutting, & etc; in fact engaged in all the amusements and recreations indigenous to rural and seaside life...It is impossible to look at any one of his works without a satisfying conviction that he is not only a diligent student of the peculiarities and varied beauties of English landscape, but an ardent lover of everything which appertains to it.
'British Artists: Their Style and Character', No. XCIX-Birket Foster, Art Journal, 1871, pp. 157-9.