Lot Essay
This picture has been much published and exhibited in recent years, its interest being three-fold. It was painted by a woman; it was included in the exhibition of 'British and Pre-Raphaelite art' held in America in 1857-8; and it illustrates one of the most important themes in Victorian social-realist painting, that of the exploited seamstress.
It takes as its text a verse from Thomas Hood's Song of the Shirt, published in Punch at Christmas 1843. As Julian Treuherz has written, this 'drew attention to the exploitation of sweated labour in the clothing trade, a notorious social abuse which was the subject of Government Reports, Select Committees, and campaigning journalism throughout Victoria's reign ... The poem caught the imagination of the public and achieved instant success, trebling the circulation of the young magazine and becoming one of the best-known poems of the age' (Hard Times exh., cat. p.24). The first to treat the subject pictorially was Richard Redgrave, in a picture exhibited at the RA in 1844; and he was followed by G.F. Watts (c.1850), Anna Blunden (1854), C.W. Cope (1869), Edward Radford (1873), Frank Holl (1875) and F.D. Hardy (1875). Hardy's version appeared in these Rooms on 13 March 1992, lot 164.
Anna Blunden threw up her position as a governess to become a painter in the early 1850s. She trained at Leigh's Academy in Newman Street, and in 1854 began to exhibit at the Royal Academy and the Society of British Artists. She was inspired by reading the early volumes of Modern Painters, and in 1855 began to correspond with Ruskin, with whom she was in love. He found her infatuation irritating, but his passion for giving instruction obliged him to continue the correspondence and he twice praised her pictures in Academy Notes. His last letter to her is dated 6 May 1862. In 1867 she went to study in Italy, settling in Rome until 1872. In April that year she heard that her youngest sister, Emily, who had married an Italian called Martino and gone to live with him in Birmingham, had died in childbirth. She returned to England and, flouting the Table of Affinities, married Martino herself. Her later life was spent in Birmingham, where her husband established the Martino Steel & Metal Company and she exhibited for many years with the Birmingham Society of Artists. For Ruskin's letters to her and further details of her life, see Virginia Surtees, op.cit.
The present picture was Anna Blunden's first exhibit at the Society of British Artists. At the time she was living in City Road, Finsbury, and the view of the London skyline seen through the window was probably painted from her lodgings. The picture was reproduced in the Illustrated London News in July 1854 in connection with a memorial to Thomas Hood in Kensal Green. Its inclusion in the exhibition of Pre-Raphaelite and other British paintings sent to America in 1857 reflects a certain Pre-Raphaelite intensity and perhaps her connection with Ruskin, but the artist was never a member of the Pre-Raphaelite circle.
It takes as its text a verse from Thomas Hood's Song of the Shirt, published in Punch at Christmas 1843. As Julian Treuherz has written, this 'drew attention to the exploitation of sweated labour in the clothing trade, a notorious social abuse which was the subject of Government Reports, Select Committees, and campaigning journalism throughout Victoria's reign ... The poem caught the imagination of the public and achieved instant success, trebling the circulation of the young magazine and becoming one of the best-known poems of the age' (Hard Times exh., cat. p.24). The first to treat the subject pictorially was Richard Redgrave, in a picture exhibited at the RA in 1844; and he was followed by G.F. Watts (c.1850), Anna Blunden (1854), C.W. Cope (1869), Edward Radford (1873), Frank Holl (1875) and F.D. Hardy (1875). Hardy's version appeared in these Rooms on 13 March 1992, lot 164.
Anna Blunden threw up her position as a governess to become a painter in the early 1850s. She trained at Leigh's Academy in Newman Street, and in 1854 began to exhibit at the Royal Academy and the Society of British Artists. She was inspired by reading the early volumes of Modern Painters, and in 1855 began to correspond with Ruskin, with whom she was in love. He found her infatuation irritating, but his passion for giving instruction obliged him to continue the correspondence and he twice praised her pictures in Academy Notes. His last letter to her is dated 6 May 1862. In 1867 she went to study in Italy, settling in Rome until 1872. In April that year she heard that her youngest sister, Emily, who had married an Italian called Martino and gone to live with him in Birmingham, had died in childbirth. She returned to England and, flouting the Table of Affinities, married Martino herself. Her later life was spent in Birmingham, where her husband established the Martino Steel & Metal Company and she exhibited for many years with the Birmingham Society of Artists. For Ruskin's letters to her and further details of her life, see Virginia Surtees, op.cit.
The present picture was Anna Blunden's first exhibit at the Society of British Artists. At the time she was living in City Road, Finsbury, and the view of the London skyline seen through the window was probably painted from her lodgings. The picture was reproduced in the Illustrated London News in July 1854 in connection with a memorial to Thomas Hood in Kensal Green. Its inclusion in the exhibition of Pre-Raphaelite and other British paintings sent to America in 1857 reflects a certain Pre-Raphaelite intensity and perhaps her connection with Ruskin, but the artist was never a member of the Pre-Raphaelite circle.