Art for the Crowd 1815–1905

Richard Redgrave, The Sempstress  1846

This painting is the only known version of the lost original which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1844 accompanied with lines from Thomas Hood’s popular poem The Song of the Shirt: ‘Oh! men with sisters dear/Oh! men with mothers and wives,/ It is not linen you’re wearing out,/But human creatures’ lives’. The success of the image was largely due to Redgrave’s presentation of the sempstress as a victim in need of salvation. The woman’s pleading expression and posture evoke standard representations of the penitent Magdalene in Old Master painting.

Gallery label, November 2016

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, A Silent Greeting  1889

The ‘silent greeting’ of the title is the gift of flowers that the young Roman soldier leaves for the sleeping woman. The subject was inspired by The Visit, a poem by the German poet and dramatist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832). Alma-Tadema took great pains over the accuracy of his depictions of the ancient world, carefully researching the architecture and interior details. However, the sentimental subject and the contemporary look of the figures – memorably described as ‘Victorians in togas’ – gives the painting the air of a modern costume drama.

Gallery label, September 2004

Benjamin Robert Haydon, Punch or May Day  1829

Benjamin Haydon thought of calling this painting ‘Life’, hoping to capture a cross-section of London. A hearse nearly collides with a marriage coach and the newly-weds contrast with the violent couple in the popular puppet show, Punch and Judy. Haydon made this work five years before the abolition of Slavery in the British Empire. He deliberately placed the upright Black coachman with the caricatured performance of the soot-blackened chimney sweep close together, so viewers would connect the two figures. Although he later expressed regret at his beliefs, at the time Haydon held racist ideas about racial hierarchies.

Gallery label, May 2023

Augustus Leopold Egg, Past and Present, No. 2  1858

This forms part of a series of three paintings which consider the consequences of love outside marriage in Victorian Britain. This painting, Past, acts as the central scene, showing a wife begging forgiveness from her husband while their children look on. He holds a letter which reveals an affair and stamps on a portrait miniature of her lover. The room is full of symbols of the family’s downfall, such as the apple cut in two.

Gallery label, May 2023

John Martin, The Last Judgement  1853

This was part of a triptych (series of three works), with The Great Day of His Wrath and The Plains of Heaven. The pictures were produced at the end of John Martin’s career, with the intention of touring them. They travelled extensively, even going on show in America and Australia. Their fame and influence helped pave the way for modern forms of popular entertainment – including blockbuster cinema.

Gallery label, August 2019

Thomas Faed, The Last of the Clan  1865

Sir Luke Fildes, The Doctor  exhibited 1891

This painting depicts a child showing the first signs of recovery following a period of grave illness. The subject matter relates to a bereavement suffered by Fildes, when in 1877 his first son died at home at the age of one. Here, the figure of the doctor stands as a symbol of quiet professional devotion, capturing, as Fildes put it, ‘the status of the doctor of our time’. Behind the child, a working class father and mother anxiously await the doctor’s assessment. The sliver of dawn light at the window suggests renewed hope in the face of near-tragedy.

Gallery label, March 2022

Arthur Boyd Houghton, Volunteers  1861

This painting shows a group of infantrymen recruiting for the Volunteer Movement which swept Britain between 1859 and 1860. It was fuelled by the revolutions in Continental Europe in 1848 and British mistrust of France.As Houghton shows in this painting, the volunteers were mainly recruited from the middle classes. They felt it was their patriotic duty to enlist in one of the volunteer battalions. But there appears to be a general lack of interest from the civilians in this painting. The gentleman on the left is carefully not looking at the soldiers.

Gallery label, July 2007

John Singer Sargent, Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose  1885–6

The children lighting lanterns are Dolly and Polly Barnard. John Singer Sargent was friends with their father, illustrator Frederick Barnard. Sargent painted it in a garden in Broadway, a village in south-west England where Sargent stayed in the summer of 1885. Sargent wanted to paint from real life. There were only a few minutes each evening where the light was right. He would place his easel and paints, pose the models beforehand, and wait for the right moment to start. As summer ended and the flowers died, he replaced them with pot plants.

Gallery label, May 2023

Sir John Everett Millais, Bt, The North-West Passage  1874

The north-west passage is a dangerous sea route round North America via the Canadian Arctic. For centuries, European explorers attempted to use it as a trade route to Asia. It became associated with failure, adversity and death, with ships and their crews battling against hopeless odds in a frozen wilderness. Millais painted this when an English expedition was setting off. Millais suggests the risks of the voyage through the grim expression of the old seaman. His daughter is pictured beside him, reading from a log book.

Gallery label, August 2018

Henry Scott Tuke, August Blue  1893–4

This is one of many pictures Tuke painted of boys bathing around Falmouth Harbour, a common scene at the time. Tuke worked from life and photographs but he idealised the scene. Its poetic title (from Algernon Swinburne’s poem ‘The Sundew’ 1866) reflects the colour that suffuses the composition. Tuke grew up in Cornwall and helped found the Newlyn School, a group of artists based in Newlyn. He was well-known for his portraits of boats as well as people.

Gallery label, September 2020

Frederic, Lord Leighton, An Athlete Wrestling with a Python  1877

This is the earlier of Frederic Leighton’s only two life-size sculptures, both made with the assistance of Thomas Brock. In subject and scale it was intended as a challenge to one of the greatest classical sculptures, The Laocoön, which shows three men being crushed by sea serpents. Frederic Leighton was a pioneer of what became known as the ‘New Sculpture’ movement in Britain. This fresh approach looked back to classical sculpture while focusing on the naturalism of the body through careful modelling of the surface. This coincided with a revival of interest in bronze, the lost wax technique used here allowing for precision in the treatment of form.

Gallery label, November 2016

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Bt, King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid  1884

This work was based on Alfred Tennyson’s poem ‘The Beggar Maid’. King Cophetua of Ethiopia falls in love with Penelophon, a young woman he sees begging for money. They marry, and she becomes Queen. This work was considered Burne-Jones’s greatest achievement. Critics praised it for its technical skill and for the message that love is more important than wealth and power. Through this painting and its reproduction as a print, Burne-Jones became seen in Europe as the most important symbolist painter of his generation.

Gallery label, August 2019

Henry Perronet Briggs, The First Interview between the Spaniards and the Peruvians  exhibited 1827

Henry Briggs portrays the first encounter in 1552 between a group of Incas and Spanish conquistadors seeking to take over their land and convert them to Catholicism. While Emperor Atahualpa receives them openly, General Francisco Pizarro secretly draws a gun that will begin a massacre of seven thousand Indigenous people. When the painting was first exhibited, some viewers praised the artistic approach, rather than praising the anti-imperial theme. Briggs imagines the Incas in the tradition of classical nude paintings.

Gallery label, May 2023

Robert Braithwaite Martineau, The Last Day in the Old Home  1862

This picture tells the story of an upper- middle-class family, forced to sell the ancestral home because of the fecklessness of a spendthrift father. The miniature case in the father’s hand and the sporting print on the left show that he has gambled away his inherited fortune on horseracing. The family’s possessions are to be sold – there are lot numbers attached to various objects and there’s an auction catalogue on the floor. But only the women appear concerned. The man and his son raise glasses of champagne, implying that the father’s hedonistic habits will pass down to his son.

Gallery label, July 2007

Augustus Leopold Egg, Past and Present, No. 3  1858

This painting forms part of a series of three which considers the consequences of love outside marriage In Victorian Britain. Past and Present No.1 and Past and Present No. 3 show ‘Present’ five years later, two weeks after the husband has died of despair. Identical moons indicate that they take place at the same moment. The two girls comfort each other. The homeless mother shelters under the Adelphi arches, by the River Thames in London, holding the baby that resulted from her affair. The posters for two plays, ‘Victims’ and ‘A Cure for Love’, and ‘Pleasure Excursions to Paris’, are ironic comments on her situation.

Gallery label, May 2023

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, A Foregone Conclusion  1885

A moment from contemporary Victorian life is shown here taking place in ancient Greece or Rome. A man brings an engagement ring to his girlfriend in the hope that she will become his fiancée. Her eager attitude shows that the result of his proposal is ‘a foregone conclusion’. Although Alma-Tadema took great care in the authenticity of his classical settings, the modern subject would have made the painting accessible to a nineteenth-century audience. The painting belonged to Sir Henry Tate’s second wife, Amy Hislop. They were married the year it was painted and he may have given it to her as an engagement present.

Gallery label, September 2004

Walter Greaves, Hammersmith Bridge on Boat-race Day  c.1862

Walter Greaves was the son of a Thames boatman and a self-taught painter. A dense crowd is assembled on Hammersmith suspension bridge to watch the annual university boat race. There were fears that the bridge was not strong enough to support the weight of heavy traffic when around 12,000 people gathered there for the event in 1870. Greaves captures the diversity of London at this time, although this work, painted in his early style, simplifies and caricatures the individuals in the crowd.

Gallery label, May 2023

Unknown artist, Britain, Unknown Man  c.1830–40

We don’t know the identity of the young man represented here or the artist who painted this work. The sitter’s luxurious jacket and waistcoat are Albanian, but his turban and loose trousers appear to be Turkish or north African. At the time, artists often depicted Black people in costume and not named. The picture follows artistic conventions of portraiture, with its focus on the man’s facial features and high-status dress. The combination of different styles suggests he might be intended to represent a character from Romantic poetry.

Gallery label, May 2023

John Martin, The Great Day of His Wrath  1851–3

American filmmaker and stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen (1920 – 2013) was inspired by Martin’s dramatic works. He called this painting ‘an incredible, visionary masterpiece, depicting catastrophe and conveying an overwhelming sense of destruction … it resembles a frame from a movie – this time, perhaps, a blockbuster disaster movie’.

Gallery label, August 2019

Elizabeth Butler (Lady Butler), The Remnants of an Army  1879

Elizabeth Butler represents the defeat of the British in the First Afghan War (1839–1842), when they failed to overthrow the Afghan leader Dōst Moammad Khān. Doctor William Brydon, believed to be the sole survivor of the British forces, reaches the British garrison at Jalalabad, ‘faint and reeling on his jaded horse’ against a dying light’. Butler was the leading battle painter in Europe, famous for depicting soldiers fighting at the edge of Empire, rather than the military elite. Butler’s family benefitted from Empire, but her circle was anti-imperial. This painting was made during the Second Afghan War, and offers a critique of that war.

Gallery label, May 2023

Lady Dorothy Stanley, His First Offence  1896

Dorothy Stanley was well-known for painting London street children. She sketched them in all kinds of activities; ‘walking along the streets you can learn far more than in your studio’. This boy is one of several that Stanley got to know and employed as regular models for her paintings. The court setting recalls literary characters such as Oliver Twist and reflects public concerns and campaigns that were slowly reforming child justice. However, the title reference to a ‘first offence’ distinguishes this boy from repeat offenders, to appeal to popular prejudices about the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor.

Gallery label, May 2023

Frederic, Lord Leighton, The Bath of Psyche  exhibited 1890

The story of Psyche comes from a tale by the Roman poet Lucius Apuleius. Psyche lived in the golden palace of Cupid, the god of love. Each night Cupid would visit Psyche’s bedroom to have sex with her, without revealing his identity. Here we see Psyche undressing to bathe before Cupid’s arrival, gazing at her reflection. Leighton based Psyche’s pose on an ancient statue of Venus Leaving the Bath that he’d seen in Naples in 1859. He may also have designed the frame, which echoes the architectural details in the background of the picture.

Gallery label, August 2019

George Elgar Hicks, Woman’s Mission: Companion of Manhood  1863

These two paintings make up two scenes in a triptych (three-part picture) called Woman’s Mission which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1863. The missing section is Guide of Childhood. As a group the pictures represent the same woman in her role as mother, wife and attentive daughter or, as one critic of the time put it: ‘woman in three phases of her duties as ministering angel’. The woman in both pictures bears a striking resemblance to the artist’s depictions of his own wife, Maria.

Gallery label, November 2016

Frank Holl, Hush!  1877

Child death was a common occurrence in Victorian society. In Hush a mother devotedly watches over her sick baby, her anxiety mirrored in the face of an older child. This painting has a companion piece, Hushed which goes on to depict the death of the baby. Frank Holl confronts his subject directly, without sentimentality. The sombre colouring and the strong contrasts between light and shade heighten the grim mood.

Gallery label, May 2023

William Maw Egley, Omnibus Life in London  1859

Egley conveys the claustrophobia of the inside of an omnibus (a horse-drawn equivalent of today’s buses). People from different parts of society, from the old country woman with her piles of baggage to the city clerk with his cane, were forced to share a small compartment. Egley painted the carriage in a coachbuilder’s yard and posed models in a makeshift ‘carriage’ made from boxes and planks in his back garden in Paddington. The Illustrated London News said ‘the stern and trying incidents’ would be ‘recognized by thousands of weary wayfarers through the streets of London.’

Gallery label, August 2018

Philip Hermogenes Calderon, Broken Vows  1856

The title of this painting suggests that the woman has recently discovered that her lover, whose initials are carved in the fence, has been unfaithful. Further details, including the discarded necklace and dying flowers, indicate her unhappy situation. The ivy-covered wall may symbolise her previous belief that their love was everlasting. Disappointed love was a popular theme in Victorian painting, and viewers were expected to unravel the situation from the symbols and expressions of the characters.

Gallery label, July 2007

Sir John Everett Millais, Bt, The Vale of Rest  1858–9

Stirred by the spirituality and yearning in Mendelssohn’s song ‘Ruhetal’, here Millais’s theme is death, signified by the presence of the grave, skull and funerary wreaths, and in the intense and solemn colours of a graveyard touched with the last rays of a setting sun. Viewers are invited to contemplate their own mortality through the preparation of the new grave in the foreground and the nun who gazes out towards them. Despite the pain and sadness in death, the title offers hope that it will bring repose from life’s cares and an infinite contentment.

Gallery label, March 2010

Frank Holl, Hushed  1877

Child death was a common occurrence in Victorian society. Hushed is a companion piece to Holl’s painting Hush! And shows the death of a baby. The mother covers her face with her hand in a gesture of grief, while her other child appears bewildered. Frank Holl confronts his subject directly, without sentimentality. The sombre colouring and the strong contrasts between light and shade heighten the grim mood.

Gallery label, May 2023

Anna Lea Merritt, Love Locked Out  1890

This picture shows young Cupid, the god of desire, pressed against the door of a tomb. It was painted as a memorial to the artist’s husband, who died just two months after they married. The thorny rose around the door frame represents the pain and persistence of love. Cupid has abandoned the world, his arrow and extinguished lamp lie on the ground with the autumn leaves. He is waiting, in the artist’s words, ‘for the door of death to open and the reunion of the lonely pair’. Merritt was a successful professional painter of a variety of subjects, including nudes. Some considered nudes unsuitable for women artists at the time. Love Locked Out proved popular when exhibited in 1890 and was bought for the nation.

Gallery label, August 2019