Last of England. The Last of England is an 1855 oil-on-panel painting by Ford Madox Brown depicting two emigrants leaving England to start a new life in Australia with their baby.
The painting has an oval format and is in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. Brown began the painting in 1852 inspired by the departure of his close friend, the Pre-Raphaelite sculptor, Thomas Woolner, who had left for Australia in July of that year.
Emigration from England was at a peak, with over 350,000 people leaving that year. Brown, who at the time considered himself very hard up and a little mad, was himself thinking of moving to India with his new family.
The painting depicts a man and his wife seeing England for the last time. The two main figures, based on Brown and his wife, Emma, stare ahead, stony-faced, ignoring the white cliffs of Dover which can be seen disappearing behind them in the top right of the picture.
They are huddled under an umbrella that glistens with sea-spray. The family's clothing and the bundle of books next to them indicate that they are middle class and educated, and so they are not leaving for the reasons that would force the emigration of the working classes; Brown's writing touched on the same theme: The educated are bound to their country by quite other ties than the illiterate man, whose chief consideration is food and physical comfort In the foreground a row of cabbages hang
The painting has an oval format and is in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. Brown began the painting in 1852 inspired by the departure of his close friend, the Pre-Raphaelite sculptor, Thomas Woolner, who had left for Australia in July of that year.
Emigration from England was at a peak, with over 350,000 people leaving that year. Brown, who at the time considered himself very hard up and a little mad, was himself thinking of moving to India with his new family.
The painting depicts a man and his wife seeing England for the last time. The two main figures, based on Brown and his wife, Emma, stare ahead, stony-faced, ignoring the white cliffs of Dover which can be seen disappearing behind them in the top right of the picture.
They are huddled under an umbrella that glistens with sea-spray. The family's clothing and the bundle of books next to them indicate that they are middle class and educated, and so they are not leaving for the reasons that would force the emigration of the working classes; Brown's writing touched on the same theme: The educated are bound to their country by quite other ties than the illiterate man, whose chief consideration is food and physical comfort In the foreground a row of cabbages hang
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