Ford Madox Brown, Work, 1852–65

Abstract

The English artist Ford Madox Brown (1821–93) painted his 137 × 197 cm oil-on-canvas Work intermittently between 1852 and 1865. It hangs in Manchester Art Gallery as does his smaller study oil painting 62 The Mount and Heath Street, Hampstead painted in 1852. Both paintings show The Mount which runs alongside Heath Street in London viewed on a sunny day along its length and with a brick wall to the left and a fence and four trees to the right. Then, as now, sunny days were not guaranteed in England; Brown’s grandson noting that ‘the weather was by no means propitious, but on very rainy days he worked in an unhorsed four-wheeled cab’ [1]. While The Mount features a solitary butcher’s boy, Work is a vivid scene filled with characters from right across the social spectrum [2]. The painting was described a few years after its completion as Brown’s ‘central, most elaborate and ingenious picture’ [3]. Today, it is also regarded to be ‘an outstanding commentary on contemporary Victorian socio-political concerns’ [4].

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