Woman and child being rescued from the sea by a man with a breeches buoy. 'The Graphic.'

The Herschels prints and drawings collection deteriorated slightly towards the end of the 19th, beginning of the 20th century becoming less a reflection of the family's interests and experiences and more simply a reflection of the magazines to which they subscribed.

From the 1840s there was a rapid increase in the number of heavily illustrated popular weekly newspapers and periodicals on the market in Britain. Within these were a group aimed more at the artisan audience than the masses. The most successful within this subcategory was the Illustrated London News (1842-) which spawned many imitators among them The Graphic founded in 1869.