concept:era modern
Work
Oil on canvas (1852–1865) by Ford Madox Brown. A densely populated street scene in Hampstead showing navvies digging a water main, surrounded by figures representing different classes from idle rich to poor. An encyclopaedic allegory of Victorian society and the dignity of labour. Held at Manchester Art Gallery.
Scholarly Significance
Expand Victorian British social realism with Ford Madox Brown's Work, one of the most complex allegorical paintings of the 19th century.
Notes
- ·Begun 1852 in Hampstead; exhibited at Brown's own one-man show in London 1865.
- ·The navvies (road workers) at the centre are the painting's moral heroes; surrounding figures represent a spectrum from the idle rich to the destitute poor.
- ·Includes portraits of the philosopher Thomas Carlyle and the Christian Socialist F.D. Maurice as background observers.
- ·Brown wrote a lengthy explanatory pamphlet for the 1865 exhibition.
- ·Acquired by Manchester Art Gallery 1885.