Information
This is a finished study, or cartoon for Brown's painting The Last of England. His inspiration for the work came from the departure of his friend and fellow artist Thomas Woolner to Australia in 1852 and his own desperate thoughts of emigrating to India due to lack of recognition and commissions. The middle class couple who dominate the oval are portraits of Brown and his future wife Emma. This drawing was produced in December 1852 and it reveals that the composition was originally to be slightly more oval in shape with far fewer figures; only the reprobate, his mother, and the young woman with her arm round the straggly haired boy from the painting can be seen in this drawing. The name of the boat carrying the emigrants was altered from 'White Horse Lin[e] of Australi[a]' to the more symbolic 'Eldorado' in the painting. Emma's shawl also changed; she is seen here in a wide checked shawl. Unlike the final painting the man has no string attached to his hat. This was added to the painting at the insistence of Brown's dealer David Thomas White. According to his diary Brown took up the cartoon again in 1855, most likely with a view to selling it (Virginia Surtees, ed., 'The Diary of Ford Madox Brown,' p. 127).In 1855 September his dealer D. T. White, bought the finished painting along with this cartoon, before selling both on to the collector B. G. Windus (Mary Bennett in The Pre-Raphaelites, exh. cat., 1984, p. 125). The financial boost given by the sale of the two works ended Brown's notions of emigrating to India.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 |
F. MADOX BROWN 1852 |
Signature and date |
bottom right |
Handwritten |
1852 |
Pencil |
|
Exhibitions
Catalogue No. |
Venue |
Date(s) |
The Exhibition of 'Work' and other Paintings by Ford Madox Brown |
71 |
191 Piccadilly, London |
1865 - 1865 |
|
Pre-Raphaelite Drawings |
40 |
\sl240\slmult0Roland, Browse & Delbanco, London |
1947-09 - 1947-09 |
|
Pre-Raphaelite Drawings |
5 |
Cambridge Arts Council Gallery |
1953-05-16 - 1953-10-24 |
5 |
Norwich Assembly Rooms |
1953-05-16 - 1953-10-24 |
5 |
Hatton Gallery, Newcastle Upon Tyne |
1953-05-16 - 1953-10-24 |
|
Some Pre-Raphaelite Paintings and Drawings |
6 |
National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth |
1955-07 - 1955-08 |
6 |
Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea |
1955-10 - 1955-10 |
|
English Eye I |
4 |
Midlands Federation Travelling Exhibition |
1958-02-01 - 1958-02-01 |
|
Pre-Raphaelite Art |
4 |
National Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide |
1962-03 - 1962-03 |
4 |
Western Australian Art Gallery, Perth |
1962-04 - 1962-05 |
4 |
The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart |
1962-06 - 1962-07 |
4 |
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne |
1962-07 - 1962-08 |
4 |
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane |
1962-08 - 1962-09 |
4 |
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney |
1962-10 - 1962-10 |
|
Ford Madox Brown 1821-1893 |
71 |
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool |
1964 - 1964 |
|
Pre-Raphaelite Drawings |
- |
Portsmouth Art Gallery |
1976-05-01 - 1976-05-29 |
|
- |
4 |
Baden Baden |
1979-01-01 - 1979-01-01 |
4 |
Frankfurt |
1979-01-01 - 1797-01-01 |
|
The Pre-Raphaelites |
178 |
Tate Gallery |
1984-03-07 - 1984-05-28 |
|
Visions of Love and Life: Pre-Raphaelite Art from the Birmingham Collection, England |
20 |
Seattle Art Museum |
1995-03-09 - 1995-05-07 |
20 |
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio |
1995-05-27 - 1995-07-16 |
20 |
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington |
1995-08-11 - 1995-10-15 |
20 |
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas |
1995-11-04 - 1996-01-02 |
20 |
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia |
1996-01-23 - 1996-04-10 |
20 |
Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery |
1996-05-25 - 1996-09-29 |
|
Theodore Fontane und die Bildende Kunst |
32 |
National Gallery, Berlin |
1998-09-01 - 1998-11-29 |
32 |
Munich |
1998-12-07 - 1999-03-09 |
|
Sunday in the Backwoods |
- |
Wolverhampton Art Gallery |
2003-07-26 - 2003-09-06 |
|
Ford Madox Brown: The Unofficial Pre-Raphaelite |
30 |
Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery |
2008-08-27 - 2008-12-14 |
|
Literature
Author(s) |
Date(s) |
Publisher |
Pages |
The Exhibition of 'Work' and other Paintings by Ford Madox Brown |
Ford Madox Brown |
1865 |
privately published by the artist |
p. 22 |
|
City of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery: Catalogue of the Permanent Collection of Drawings |
A E Whitley |
1939 |
Bemrose & Sons, Ltd., DerbyBirmingham Museum & Art Gallery |
p. 42; repr. p. 427 |
|
Pre-Raphaelite Drawings |
|
1947 |
Roland, Browse & Delbanco, London |
p. 11 |
|
Pre-Raphaelite Drawings and Watercolours |
|
1953 |
Arts Council of Great Britain, London |
p. 6 |
|
Some Pre-Raphaelite Paintings and Drawings |
|
1955 |
Arts Council of Great Britain, Welsh Committee |
p. 8 |
|
Pre-Raphaelite Art |
|
1962 |
The State Art Galleries of Australia |
p. 10 |
|
Ford Madox Brown 1821-1893 |
|
1964 |
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool |
p. 31 |
|
An annotated edition of the Diary and selected Letters of Ford Madox Brown 1850-1870 |
Deborah Cherry |
1977 |
- |
p. 272 |
|
The Pre-Raphaelites |
|
1984 |
Tate Gallery, London |
p. 255; repr. p. 255 |
|
The Diary of Ford Madox Brown |
Virginia Surtees |
1985 |
Yale University Press, New Haven and London for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art |
p. 153 |
|
Visions of Love and Life: Pre-Raphaelite Art from the Birmingham Collection, England |
Stephen Wildman |
1995 |
Art Services International, Alexandria, Virginia |
p. 113; repr. p. 115 |
|
Fontane und die Bildende Kunst |
Claude Keisch, Moritz Wullen, Peter-Klaus Schusler |
1998 |
National Gallery, Berlin |
cat. no. 32 |
|
Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain |
|
2005 |
Yale University Press |
pp. 32-34 ff.; repr. p. 33 |
|
Ford Madox Brown: The Unofficial Pre-Raphaelite |
Laura MacCulloch, Tessa Sidey |
2008 |
D. Giles Limited, London |
p. 55-56, 67; repr. p. 18 |
Associated people
Associated places
Name |
Type |
Dover, Kent, England |
Depicted |
Related work & resources
Discuss this work
|