An Old Man Had Come out of One of the Houses, from "Not Honorably Discharged"

About the Artwork

William Leroy Jacobs created this image for a short story by Alice French (writing under the pen name Octave Thanet), “Not Honorably Discharged,” published in Collier’s Fiction Number for May 14, 1904. Magazines like Collier’s offered new opportunities and a ready source of income for emerging and lesser-known writers and artists. In his depiction of this story inspired by contemporary life, Jacobs focused on the protagonist, an older soldier whose black coat creates a dark silhouette in the snowy landscape, highlighting both his respectability and his isolation from the other characters in the scene.