Le jour de l'an ou La fidèle petite fille
A French children's book from 1831, published by Madame Susanne Guers, a bookseller, and written for young readers, its title meaning roughly New Year's Day or the faithful little girl. The first picture shows a girl in a white dress tending tall lilies and roses beside a watering can, with a mountain landscape and a small dog behind her; the second is a small, dense engraving of a bent elderly woman in a shawl and bonnet beside a fallen basket, set against heavy foliage. A designer might take from them the soft, stippled tonal shading of early nineteenth-century engraving and the simple garden and rural costume details.
