Realism Abroad

Ford Madox Brown

Work

1852–65

Oil on canvas, 137 × 197.3 cm. Manchester Art Gallery

Navvies dig up a Hampstead street while people of every class pass by.

• Brown showed it at his own exhibition in 1865, with a catalogue essay explaining the figures.
• The two men at the right are portraits of the writers Thomas Carlyle and F. D. Maurice.
• A street scene packed with real types becomes an argument about the value of labor.

Navvy

a laborer digging roads, canals or railways.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain