Here the Bellman is Father Time ringing his bell.
The image on the lower right side is an allegorical English School painting (ca. 1610, by an unknown painter) of Queen Elizabeth I at old age together with the allegories of Death and of Father Time.
The upper left side is a depiction of the Bellman from Henry Holiday’s front cover illustration to Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark (1876).
A few years after I had found this painting, I recognized, that not only Henry Holiday’s Bellman looks like that unknown painter’s Father Time, But also the postures of the old queen and the old man have some similarities.
2018-10-11, updated: 2024-09-05