Ford
Madox Brown was born in Calais in 1821. Brown studied art at Bruges,
Ghent, Antwerp, Rome and Paris before returning to England in 1845.
Three years later Brown became friendly with Dante Gabriel Rossetti
and other members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
In 1852 Brown began work on what was to be the first serious attempt
by a British artist to represent the working class in an urban environment.
The painting shows the excavations for the laying of a sewage system
in Hampstead. The figures in the painting were based on the actual
navvies that did the work. Also in the picture are two observers,
F. D. Maurice and Thomas
Carlyle. Maurice was the leader of the Christian
Socialist movement and founder of the Working
Men's College, an institution where Brown taught art.
Thomas Carlyle, like Maurice, was another
man who Ford Madox Brown greatly admired. Brown had been influenced
by Carlyle's view of the "nobleness and even sacredness of work".
In the painting Brown attempted to capture what he believed was the
"inherent dignity of the British labourer".
Although started in 1852 Work
was not completed until 1865. Thomas
Plint, a fervent supporter of the Temperance
Society from Leeds, purchased the painting
before it was finished in 1856. Plint also influenced the content
of the picture by suggesting the inclusion of Thomas
Carlyle and the women in the picture distributing Temperance tracts.
Another important painting produced by Ford Madox Brown at this
time was The
Last of England
(1852-5). The picture shows the departure of
Brown's friend, Thomas
Woolner, for the Australian gold-fields.
Brown was also a close associate of William
Morris and in 1861 was a founder member of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner
& Company. Brown main contribution was designing furniture and
stained glass.
Ford Madox Brown completed twelve frescoes for Manchester
Town Hall before his death in 1893.
Ford Madox Brown, Work (1852-1865)
(1)
In a catalogue that accompanied the first exhibition of Work
in 1865, Ford Madox Brown described the background to the painting.
At that time extensive excavations, connected with the supply of water,
were going on in the neighbourhood, and, seeing and studying daily
as I did the British excavator, or navvy in the full swing of his
activity (with his manly and picturesque costume, and with the rich
glow of colour which exercise under a hot sun will impart), it appeared
to me that he was at least as worthy of the powers of an English painter
as the fisherman of the Adriatic, the peasant of the Campagna, or
the Neapolitan lazzarone. Gradually this idea developed itself
into that of Work as it now exists, with the British excavator for
the central group, as the outward and visible type of Work.
(2)
Thomas Plint, letter to Ford Madox Brown (November, 1856)
Cannot you introduce both Carlyle and Kingsley, and change one of
the fashionable young ladies into a quiet, earnest, holy looking one,
with a book or two and tracts? I want this put in, for I am much interested
in this work myself, and know others who are.
(3)
The Illustrated London News
(1865)
Bravo! Mr. Brown, we would at once exclaim for the boldness of representing
as your principal hero that potent agent in the work of British civilization,
the excavator or navvy. We applaud, also, the variously suggestive,
and by no means squeamish, way in which the theme Work is illustrated,
positively and negatively. We applaud, we repeat, the honest effort
to represent the actualities of workaday life.
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