John William Waterhouse, The Lady of Shalott 1888. Tate.
16 rooms in Historic and Early Modern British Art
Prosperity in Victorian Britain helps art become spectacularly popular. Dramatic images from life and literature attract blockbuster audiences
Britain’s wealth swells in the 19th century, fuelled by imperial expansion and industrial development. While most people remain poor, many have more money and leisure time. Millions enjoy art and culture, whether reading cliff-hanger novels by writers like Charles Dickens or visiting vast imperial displays like the Great Exhibition of 1851.
Thousands queue to view popular artworks on tour throughout Britain. Better printing allows more people to see or own reproductions. Some of the paintings in this room become world famous. Acts of Parliament and wealthy donors – typically industrialists – help public galleries open, with free entry, in cities such as Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow and London. One of these, the National Gallery of British Art, funded by the sugar merchant Henry Tate, becomes known as the Tate Gallery.
To grab the attention of these crowds, artists choose literary and modern-life subjects that reflect ideas dominating their time. They often overlook, caricature or romanticise the experiences of many people. These include women, people of colour, workers or those living in poverty. However, traces of these lives can be seen in some of the paintings here.
Sir William Blake Richmond, Jochebed with Moses and Miriam c.1865
This painting reflects a renewed interest in stories of slavery in Britain at the time of the Civil War between the American North and South. Many British artists were sympathetic to the cause of the North which sought to end slavery across the country. William Blake Richmond depicts the model Fanny Eaton and two of her children. Eaton was born in Jamaica, where her mother Matilda Foster, a woman of African descent, was born into slavery. Eaton moved to London with her mother when she was a child. She was a very successful model in London. She often appeared in roles which conveyed strong emotions and deep thought.
Gallery label, May 2023
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artworks in Art for the Crowd
Albert Moore, A Garden 1869
Moore, like many of his contemporaries, was influenced by Japanese art. He produced decorative and subtly coloured pictures. Here, the woman’s costume allows him to concentrate on the colour, texture and movement of draped fabric. Art critic Sidney Colvin said Moore’s subjects were ‘merely a mechanism for getting beautiful people into beautiful situations’. The flower-like symbol at the bottom of the picture was used by Moore as a signature.
Gallery label, August 2018
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artworks in Art for the Crowd
William Powell Frith, The Derby Day 1856–8
The Derby Day was first exhibited in 1858 at the Royal Academy in London. It was so popular that a barrier had to be put up to protect the work. The annual Derby at Epsom Downs racecourse in Surrey, south-east England attracted huge crowds. Frith’s detailed panorama focuses on the day’s entertainment, relegating the racing to the margins. On the left, a group of men in top hats bet on a game-playing ‘trickster’. In the centre, a crowd of bare-footed children watches an acrobat and his son. Behind them are carriages filled with racegoers enjoying Derby day.
Gallery label, November 2019
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artworks in Art for the Crowd
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
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artworks in Art for the Crowd
James Ward, Gordale Scar (A View of Gordale, in the Manor of East Malham in Craven, Yorkshire, the Property of Lord Ribblesdale) ?1812–4, exhibited 1815
Gordale Scar is a bank of limestone cliffs near Settle, Yorkshire. Ward painted this picture for Lord Ribblesdale, a local landowner. He emphasised the height and scale of the cliffs by subtly manipulating the perspective. In the foreground he shows deer and cattle, including a white bull from the (originally wild) Chillingham herd, who appears to guard the cleft of Gordale Beck. Working in the last years of the Napoleonic wars, Ward aimed to depict a national landscape, primordial and unchanging, defended by ‘John Bull’ in animal form. His painting also epitomised the awe-inspiring qualities of the fashionable ‘Sublime’ landscape.
Gallery label, March 2010
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artworks in Art for the Crowd
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
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artworks in Art for the Crowd
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
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artworks in Art for the Crowd
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
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artworks in Art for the Crowd
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
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Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Bt, The Golden Stairs 1880
This painting is an example of Burne-Jones’s interest in investigating a mood rather than telling a story. He deliberately made his pictures mysterious and the meaning of this work has been debated by critics. One suggestion is that the staircase, without visible beginning or end, represents continuous movement. Models for the painting include Frances Graham, daughter of Burne-Jones’s patron William Graham and Mary Gladstone, daughter of British Prime Minister WE Gladstone. Burne-Jones’s daughter, Margaret, is pictured at the top of the stairs.
Gallery label, August 2019
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James Tissot, Summer (‘Portrait’) 1876
Tissot played on ambiguity in this painting. He invites the viewer to interpret it, like a problem picture. This genre of painting, with open-ended narratives, widely appealed to Victorians at the time. His model, Miss Lloyd, stands at the entrance of a billiards’ room, a space traditionally associated with men. She is either leaving or inviting someone in and her large engagement ring adds mystery as to who she is looking at. Tissot also made a print on the same subject called Portrait of Miss L… or ‘Il faut qu’une porte soit ouverte ou fermée (A Door Must Be Open or Closed). He moved to London from Paris in 1871 during the Franco-Prussian war and stayed until 1882.
Gallery label, November 2019
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artworks in Art for the Crowd
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
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artworks in Art for the Crowd
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
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artworks in Art for the Crowd
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
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artworks in Art for the Crowd
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
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artworks in Art for the Crowd
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
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artworks in Art for the Crowd
John William Waterhouse, The Lady of Shalott 1888
English poet Alfred Tennyson’s poem The Lady of Shalott (1833) describes a heroine confined to a tower and cursed to die if she looks directly upon the outside world. By using a mirror, she embroiders scenes of passers-by. When the Lady glimpses the Arthurian knight Sir Lancelot, she falls in love and defies the curse. Out in the cold world, on the point of death, she frees a boat to seek him. Lancelot is visible on her embroidery and familiar Pre-Raphaelite clues foretell her fate: house martins fly low as the wind blows her hair and extinguishes the candles.
Gallery label, September 2024
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artworks in Art for the Crowd
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
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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
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artworks in Art for the Crowd
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
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artworks in Art for the Crowd
John Singer Sargent, Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose 1885–6
John Singer Sargent painted this work from real life. He would place his easel and paints outside, pose the models, and wait for the few moments each evening when the light was just right. As summer ended and the flowers died, he replaced them with pot plants. The painting was completed over two years in Broadway, in the Cotswolds. It was one of the first paintings Sargent made after moving from Paris to London and it helped make his reputation in Britain when it was purchased for the nation through the Chantrey Bequest.
Gallery label, January 2025
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Herbert Draper, The Lament for Icarus exhibited 1898
Icarus’s father, the inventor Daedalus, made wings that allowed them to fly away from their island prison. The exhilarated Icarus forgot warnings and soared too close to the sun, melting the wax that secured the feathers, and he fell to his death. Charles Darwin’s publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859 gave an optimistic picture of the present and future evolution of humankind, but it also introduced ideas of a deep and obscure past. Art and literature took up this theme of origins, man’s mythical history and struggles between animal and human nature.
Gallery label, February 2016
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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
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Augustus Leopold Egg, Past and Present, No. 1 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
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James Tissot, Holyday c.1876
This painting is set in the artist’s garden in the wealthy north London suburb of St John’s Wood. It features its distinctive cast-iron colonnade enclosing a large ornamental fishpond. St John’s Wood was considered a rather louche area and this picture of young people flirting, unnoticed by their sleeping chaperone, was considered by some to be rather vulgar. The men are wearing the caps of I Zingari, an elite amateur cricket club.James Tissot had fled to London in 1870 after the fall of the Paris Commune, and stayed until 1882.
Gallery label, July 2007
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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
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artworks in Art for the Crowd
Emily Mary Osborn, Nameless and Friendless. “The rich man’s wealth is his strong city, etc.” - Proverbs, x, 15 1857
This painting addresses the plight of a single woman trying to make a living in a hostile environment. A young woman in mourning dress offers a picture to a dealer whose expression suggests rejection. Osborn was actively involved in the campaign for women’s rights that gathered momentum in the mid-19th century. Her painting was probably intended as a political statement as its exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1857 coincided with the formation of the Society of Female Artists, an organisation aimed at enabling women to exhibit and sell their work in public.
Gallery label, November 2016
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artworks in Art for the Crowd
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
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artworks in Art for the Crowd
Amelia Robertson Hill, Percy Bysshe Shelley 1882
Hill came from the artistic Paton family and was herself a prominent Scottish sculptor, contributing three figures to the Scott Monument in Edinburgh. There is no reliable likeness of Percy Bysshe Shelley as an adult, and Hill’s fascination for the Romantic poet translated into this monumental idealised bust. A prized possession, she kept it until she died, prominently displayed in the large vestibule of her studio home.
Gallery label, November 2016
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artworks in Art for the Crowd
Art in this room
Sir William Blake Richmond
Jochebed with Moses and Miriam
c.1865
Albert Moore
A Garden
1869
William Powell Frith
The Derby Day
1856–8
Benjamin Robert Haydon
Punch or May Day
1829
James Ward
Gordale Scar (A View of Gordale, in the Manor of East Malham in Craven, Yorkshire, the Property of Lord Ribblesdale)
?1812–4, exhibited 1815
Sir John Everett Millais, Bt
The North-West Passage
1874
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