Information
Having successfully experimented with depicting women in eighteenth-century costume in previous compositions such as 'The Infant's Repast,' (1848, Wightwick Manor) Brown chose to continue this theme for his first 'en plein air painting', 'Pretty Baa-lambs' . In earlier paintings he had, like other Pre-Raphaelite artists, painted the landscape outdoors but the figures in the studio. In 'Pretty Baa-lambs' Brown went further and posed his models outdoors, wanting to depict on canvas the effect of bright sunlight exactly as he found it in nature. He described working on the painting in his diary noting that 'The baa lamb picture was painted almost entirely in sunlight which twice gave me a fever while painting. I used to take the lay figure out every morning & bring it in at night or if it rained. Emma sat for the lady & Kate for the child. The lambs & sheep used to be brought every morning from Clappam [sic] common in a truck. One of them eat [sic] up all the flowers one morning in the garden where they used to behave very ill. The background was painted on the common. The medium I used was Robersons undrying copal (Flake White)' (Virginia Surtees,ed., 'The Diary of Ford Madox Brown,' p. 76).The landscape was later retouched but a smaller version at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, gives an idea of its original appearance. The meaning of the painting remains ambiguous, Brown insisted that 'this picture was painted out in the sunlight; the only intention being to render the effect as well as my powers in a first attempt of this kind would allow,' however, it also combined the theme of motherhood with an interest in the eighteenth-century, both of which had preoccupied him for the previous two years ('The Exhibition of Work and other Paintings by Ford Madox Brown,' p. 6).His second wife Emma and their daughter Cathy posed for the mother and child, and Brown hired the sheep from a local farmer.LM
- Purchased, 1956.
- © Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery
Makers
Association |
Artist |
Organisation |
Artist |
Ford Madox Brown |
- |
Inscriptions
Type |
Position(s) |
Method |
Date(s) |
Notes |
F Madox Brown 1851-59 |
Signature and date |
bottom right |
Painted |
1859 |
Red paint. |
|
Exhibitions
Catalogue No. |
Venue |
Date(s) |
- |
1291 |
Royal Academy, London |
1852 - 1852 |
|
Works by Living Artists |
55 |
Academy of Arts, Newcastle |
1852 - 1852 |
|
Works by Modern Artists |
241 |
St Enoch's Hall, Glasgow |
1854 - 1855 |
|
35th Exhibition |
3 |
Liverpool Academy of Arts |
1859 - 1859 |
|
The Exhibition of Work and other Paintings by Ford Madox Brown |
11 |
191 Piccadilly, London |
1865 - 1865 |
|
A Pre-Raphaelite Collection |
11 |
Goupil Gallery, London |
1896-06 - 1896-07 |
|
Collected Works by Ford Madox Brown |
16 |
Hogarth Room, The Leicester Galleries, London |
1909-06 - 1909-07 |
|
Ford Madox Brown 1821-1893 |
22 |
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool |
1964 - 1964 |
|
Romantic Art in Britain: Paintings and Drawings 1760-1860 |
212 |
Detroit Institute of Fine Arts |
1968 - 1968 |
212 |
Philadelphia Museum of Art |
1968 - 1968 |
|
Paintings in the Leathart Collection |
17 |
Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne |
1968 - 1968 |
|
Royal Academy Bicentenary |
378 |
Royal Academy, London |
1968 - 1969 |
|
Pre-Raphaelite Patrons in the North East |
10 |
Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne |
1989 - 1990 |
|
Visions of Love and Life: Pre-Raphaelite Art from the Birmingham Collection, England |
18 |
Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington |
1995-03-09 - 1995-05-07 |
18 |
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio |
1995-05-27 - 1995-07-16 |
18 |
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington |
1995-08-11 - 1995-10-15 |
18 |
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas |
1995-11-04 - 1996-01-02 |
18 |
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia |
1996-01-23 - 1996-04-10 |
18 |
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery |
1996-05-25 - 1996-09-29 |
|
Theodor Fontane and the Visual Arts |
31 |
Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin |
1998 - 1998 |
|
Light: Art, Technology and Society in the Industrial Age, 1750-1900 |
- |
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam |
2000 - 2000 |
|
Love, Labour & Loss: 300 Years of Livestock Farming in Art |
95 |
Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery, Carlisle |
2002-07-20 - 2002-09-22 |
95 |
Royal Albert Memorial Museum |
2002-10-05 - 2003-01-04 |
|
Pre-Raphaelite Vision: Truth to Nature |
27 |
Tate Britain, London |
2004-02-12 - 2004-05-03 |
27 |
Altes Museum |
2004-06-12 - 2004-09-19 |
27 |
Fundacion 'la Caixa' |
2004-10-06 - 2005-01-09 |
|
Ford Madox Brown: The Unofficial Pre-Raphaelite |
27 |
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery |
08-08-23 - 08-12-14 |
|
The Pre-Raphaelites |
76 |
Nationalmuseum |
2009-02-26 - 2009-05-24 |
|
Literature
Author(s) |
Date(s) |
Publisher |
Pages |
The Exhibition of Work and other Paintings by Ford Madox Brown |
Ford Madox Brown |
1865 |
Published privately by the artist |
pp. 6-7 |
|
Ford Madox Brown: A Record of his Life and Works |
F M Hueffer |
1896 |
Longmans, Green and Co., London |
p. 74ff. |
|
A Pre-Raphaelite Collection |
|
1896 |
The Goupil Gallery, London |
p. 15 |
|
Pre-Raphaelite Diaries and Letters |
William Michael Rossetti |
1900 |
Hurst and Blackett Limited, London |
pp. 108-14 |
|
Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood |
William Holman Hunt |
1905 |
Macmillan and Co., London and New York |
vol. I, p. 277 |
|
Catalogue of an Exhibition of Collected Works by Ford Madox Brown with preface and Notes by Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer |
|
1909 |
The Leicester Galleries, London |
p. 31-32 |
|
Ford Madox Brown 1821-1893 |
Mary Bennett |
1964 |
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool |
pp. 16-17; repr. pl. 5 |
|
Ford Madox Brown and the Pre-Raphaelite History Picture |
Lucy Rabin |
1978 |
Garland Publishing, New York and London |
p. 206-214, pl. 70 |
|
The Diary of Ford Madox Brown |
Virginia Surtees |
1981 |
Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for British Art |
p. 74ff. |
|
Art: A History of changing Style |
Sara Cornell |
1983 |
Phaidon, Oxford |
p. 342, repr. Fig. 417 |
|
Ford Madox Brown and the Pre-Raphaelite Circle |
Raymond Watkinson, Teresa Newman |
1991 |
Chatto and Windus, London |
pp. 58-61ff. |
|
Visons of Love and Life: Pre-Raphaelite Art from the Birmingham Collection |
Stephen Wildman |
1995 |
Art Services International, Alexandria, Virginia |
p. 109 |
|
The Art of Ford Madox Brown |
Kenneth Bendiner |
1998 |
The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, Pennsylvannia |
p. 135 |
|
The Pre-Raphaelite Landscape |
Allen Staley |
2001 |
Yale University Press, New Haven and London |
pp. 22ff. |
|
Pre-Raphaelite Vision: Truth to Nature |
Allen Staley, Christopher Newall |
2004 |
Tate, London |
pp. 67-68; repr. p. 68 |
|
Pre-Rapahelite Painting Techniques |
Jacqueline Ridge, Joyce Townsend, Stephen Hackney |
2004 |
Tate Gallery Publishing, London |
pp. 128-33 |
|
Ford Madox Brown: The Unofficial Pre-Raphaelite |
Laura MacCulloch, Tessa Sidey |
2008 |
D. Giles Limted. London |
p. 55 |
|
Ford Madox Brown: The Unofficial Pre-Raphaelite |
Angela Thirlwell |
2008 |
D. Giles Limted. London |
pp. 12-13 |
|
The Pre-Raphaelites |
|
2009 |
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
cat.76,p.187; fig.82 |
Provenance
Purchased from the artist by James Leathart 1859 (sold 1896); H. Yates Thompson; Mr E. M. Thompson (sold Sotheby's 27 June 1956, lot 81); bought Colnaghi |
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