BROWN, Ford Madox - b. 1821 Calais, d. 1893 London - WGA

BROWN, Ford Madox

(b. 1821 Calais, d. 1893 London)

English painter, born in Calais, and studied in Belgium, Paris (1840-44) and Rome (1845-46). In Rome he met Overbeck and other Nazarene artists, and was strongly influenced by their use of clear colour and medieval subject matter, which reinforced the teaching he had received in Belgium. He went to England in 1846, and his Wycliffe (Bradford, with preparatory sketch) of 1847-48 so impressed Rossetti that he asked to become his pupil. This brought Brown into the orbit of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Although he never became a member of the Brotherhood he had much in common with them, notably painting out of doors and developing an interest in contemporary genre subjects, such as his evocative The Last of England (1852-55, Birmingham), inspired by the emigration to the Colonies in the mid-19th century.

In 1852-65 he executed the large Work for Manchester Town Hall, saying of it: ‘The British excavator … in the full swing of his activity … appeared to me … at least as worthy of the powers of an English painter as the fisherman of the Adriatic, the peasant of the Campagna, or the Neapolitan lazzarone.’ There are other works in Liverpool, London (Tate Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum), Melbourne, Sydney (Chaucer Reading His Poems to Edward III, one of the several versions of his painting for the Houses of Parliament, 1848 onwards) and Yale.

The Last of England

This famous image depicts two emigrants leaving England to start a new life abroad. The theme was inspired by the emigration of the sculptor Thomas Woolner, a fellow Pre-Raphaelite, who left for the goldfields of Australia in July 1852. In the same year, 369,000 emigrants left Britain to seek their fortune overseas.

Brown himself, hardly able to make a living from his art, was contemplating emigrating to India when he began work on The Last of England. As the main focus of the picture he chose a middle-class couple. Beneath her shawl the woman cradles a small baby, whose tiny hand (modelled on that of Brown’s own child) is just visible, grasping its mother’s hand. The models for the figures were the artist himself and his second wife, Emma.

The rather comical-looking cabbages arranged around the boat are intended to indicate a lengthy voyage. In the distance, the White Cliffs of Dover are just visible, while at the back of the boat a cabin boy is selecting vegetables for dinner from a small lifeboat, which bears the ironic name of the ship, Eldorado.

The circular format is reminiscent of a Renaissance tondo, but also serves to emphasise the couple’s unity.

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Work

Ford Madox Brown had a wide knowledge of continental history painting, but had been particularly impressed by the medievalism of the Nazarenes. His early pictures show him trying to combine such medievalism with the naturalist tradition, giving his work a vigour that was readily appreciated by the younger Pre-Raphaelites.

This ambitious composition can be described as a “real allegory.” To paint his chosen location (in the north London suburb of Hampstead), he had carried his huge canvas and set it up in situ throughout the summer of 1852. Hence the sunlight that illuminates some of the protagonists (the “navvies,” the orphans with their big sister, and, in the distance on the right, the people carrying election posters), while in the shade of the trees the artist portrays a wealthy couple on horseback and, on the other side of the railings, a family of Irish tramps. On the far right, observing this spectacle of the entire social spectrum, we recognize Thomas Carlyle and Frederick Denison Maurice, whose ideas are illustrated here.

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