Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery Pre-Raphaelite Online Resource : The Collection

The Spirit of Justice - Study for Wisdom

By Ford Madox Brown

1843 – 1850

Accession number: 1906P712

Black chalk on paper

Width: 238 mm

Height: 315 mm

Head of a man. Full face, neck and shoulders only roughly drawn in.

Information

\qjBrown entered his cartoon 'The Spirit of Justice' into the 1845 competition to decorate the Houses of Parliament. His design is an abstract representation of Justice and depicts Justice listineing to the case of a poor a widow who has been wronged by a powerful baron. Justice sits on the top tier surrounded by the allegorical figures of Mercy and Erudition, Truth and Wisdom. Below them are the 'Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and the armed servants of Justice' (Hueffer, Ford madox brown: a Record of his Lfe and Works, p. 33). This drawing has been identified as a study for the figure of Wisdom by Mary Bennett in her forthcoming catalogue raisonné. Wisdom sits on the right of Justice with his symbol, a snake, in his right hand.LM

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

Makers

Association	Artist	Organisation
Artist	Ford Madox Brown	-

Literature

Author(s)	Date(s)	Publisher	Pages
City of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery: Catalogue of the Permanent Collection of Drawings
A E Whitley	1939	Bemrose & Sons Ltd, Derby	p.46

Ford Madox Brown: The Unofficial Pre-Raphaelite
Laura MacCulloch, Tessa Sidey	2008	D. Giles Limited, London	p. 69

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