Information

This is one of three sheets of drawings in the collection for a small picture Brown painted in 1849 called 'Infant's repast' (see also 1906P678 and 1906P758). The surviving oil sketch for it is held at Wightwick Manor, Wolverhampton. Brown's diary records that he used Mrs Ashley and her baby as the model for his studies. On 26 and 30 October he wrote respectively: 'drew a study of childs head sucking' and 'worked 4 hours from Mrs Ashley & child, made drawing of the legs & arm etc' (Virginia Surtees, ed., 'The Diary of Ford Madox Brown,' p. 48).The main inspiration for the subject appears to have been Charles West Cope's painting 'The Young Mother' which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1846 (oil on panel, Victoria and Albert Museum, London). The two versions of the subject are small in size and share the same full length profile composition. In fact they are so similar that Brown must have seen it as an opportunity to out do an artistic rival and indulge in his love of eighteenth-century subjects, clothing the mother in period costume rather than contemporary dress.LM

  • Purchased and presented by subscribers, 1906.
  • © Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery

Makers

Association Artist Organisation
Artist Ford Madox Brown -

Inscriptions

Type Position(s) Method Date(s) Notes
Ford M Brown London/48
Signature and date bottom right Handwritten 1848 Brown ink.
 

Exhibitions

Catalogue No. Venue Date(s)
Exhibition of the Works of Ford Madox Brown
189 Grafton Galleries, London 1897 - 1897
 
Loan Collection of Works by English Pre-Raphaelite Painters
4 National Gallery of British Art 1911-12 - 1912-03
 
Pre-Raphaelite Art
5 National Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide 1962-03 - 1962-03
5 Western Australian Art Gallery, Perth 1962-04 - 1962-05
5 The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart 1962-06 - 1962-07
5 National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne 1962-07 - 1962-08
5 Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane 1962-08 - 1962-09
5 Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney 1962-10 - 1962-10
 
Artists of Victoria's England
6 Cummer Gallery of Art, Jacksonville 1965-02 - 1965-03
 
Sacred Bond: Images of motherhood
- Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery 1990-09-22 - 1990-11-18
 
Visions of Love and Life: Pre-Raphaelite Art from the Birmingham Collection, England
9 Seattle Art Museum 1995-03-09 - 1995-05-07
9 Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio 1995-05-27 - 1995-07-16
9 Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington 1995-08-11 - 1995-10-15
9 Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas 1995-11-04 - 1996-01-02
9 High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia 1996-01-23 - 1996-04-10
9 Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery 1996-05-26 - 1996-09-29
 
Ford Madox Brown: The Unofficial Pre-Raphaelite
20 Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery 2008-08-27 - 2008-12-14
 

Literature

Author(s) Date(s) Publisher Pages
Exhibition of the Works of Ford Madox Brown
1897 Grafton Galleries, London p. 49
 
Twelve English Pre-Raphaelite Drawings
1925 Methuen & Company, London pl. 10
 
City of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery: Catalogue of the Permanent Collection of Drawings
A E Whitley 1939 Bemrose & Sons Ltd, Derby p. 45
 
Visions of Love and Life: Pre-Raphaelite Art from the Birmingham Collection, England
Stephen Wildman 1995 Art Services International, Alexandria, Virginia p. 88; repr. p. 89
 
Pre-Raphaelite Art
1962 The State Art Galleries of Australia p. 10
 
Ford Madox Brown: The Unofficial Pre-Raphaelite
Laura MacCulloch, Tessa Sidey 2008 D. Giles Limited, London pp. 52, 67; repr. p. 20

Associated people

Name Type
Mrs Ashley Depicted

Related work & resources

Discuss this work

Start a discussion about this work.

You need to login to discuss this work. Click here to login.

If you are not yet registered click here to become a member.
Find out more about membership