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 |
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