Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Ford Madox Brown, Work (1852-65). Oil on canvas. Manchester City Art Gallery.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All true work is sacred; in all true Work, were it but true hand-labour, there is
something of divineness. Labour, wide as the Earth, has its summit in Heaven ... the
Thus spoke Thomas Carlyle, the sage of Chelsea, in his book Past and Present
(1843) a passionate critique of the condition of England in the early 1840s. In the
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(At that time there were two million unemployed out of a working population of
fifteen million.) Carlyle's view was that happiness is a paltry goal for humankind.
We are not placed on this earth to be happy but to work. In work humans find
fulfilment; consequently, the only happiness they should be concerned about is that
cultural achievements are the culmination of centuries of human labour; hence, the
overriding importance of work. The gospel of work - the ideology of the nobility of
For example, the English painter Ford Madox Brown (1821-93) owned a copy of
Past and Present in which the passages about work were underlined. Brown had
been trained in academies in Belgium and France where he had acquired the skills
of a history painter. Initially, his aim was to make a career as a painter of large scale
murals in public buildings dealing with subjects from English history. By the 1850s
life. It was during a stay in Hampstead in June 1852 that the idea for an ambitious
came to him. At that time excavations were taking place in the streets in connection
with water supplies. Brown admired the manliness of the British navvies digging the
trenches and decided to make them the heroes of his picture, to use them to
personify the nobility of work. At once he began to produce an oil sketch of the
setting in which he intended to place his figures: the Mount and Heath St looking
northwards (remarkably, this setting has changed little since 1852). 'Work', as the
picture was inevitably called, proved very difficult to execute and to complete. It
engaged Brown on and off for the next eleven years. It was finally publicly exhibited
the pawnbroker were a regular occurrence in the Brown household. He could only
make steady progress on 'Work' with the support of patronage. Eventually this was
supplied by Thomas E. Plint a pious Leeds stockbroker who, from November 1856,
paid Brown a monthly salary to complete the picture, and by James Leathart a
smaller replica of 'Work' which is now in Birmingham City Art Gallery. (Both these
men were patrons of Brown's artist friends the Pre-Raphaelites.) The ideology of
picture were necessitated by the advent of Plint: he asked Brown to include the
figures of two intellectuals - Carlyle and Charles Kingsley - whose ideas were
sympathetic to work and to workers. Brown included Carlyle but substituted the
Rev. F. D. Maurice for Kingsley. Maurice and Kingsley were leading figures in the
revolution of 1848 and the mass demonstrations of the English Chartists in the
same year.
historical document in its own right even though Brown derived the content and
characters of the painting from the world around him and attempted to synthesize
the painting's iconography and symbolism, the modem viewer is drawn inexorably
into the complex world - the people, classes, ideas, ethics, conflicts - of Victorian
society. The painting, therefore, is a relic which enables us to engage with a bygone
age but one which has many parallels with our own (the issues of work and
The composition of 'Work,' is crammed with human bodies; the wide variety of
types and dress depicted directly communicates a sense of the complex structure of
Victorian society and the teeming street life of the metropolis. Brown's cast of
street sellers (a herb gatherer, an orange girl, a pastry delivery boy, a beer seller),
candidate, and four dogs (these animals are differentiated as to type and character
For his sources Brown relied on popular imagery as well as direct observation:
there are a number of striking similarities between details of 'Work' and Hogarth's
prints of London street life, and engravings of similar scenes appearing in such
magazines as Punch and the Illustrated London News. Also influential, it seems
probable, was Henry Mayhew's survey of the social, economic and cultural
classify the large amount of raw data he and his collaborators assembled. See, for
work', and 'those who need not work'). The opposition between industry and idle-
ness, first treated as a pictorial theme by Hogarth, also underpins Brown's paint-
ing: the honest toil of the navvies is juxtaposed against the less worthy labour of
the street folk and the even worse idleness of the rich. Indeed, all the characters of
'Work' can be mapped onto Mayhew's classification scheme. Both journalist and
credit for this achievement but it also has to be recognised that a typology - a
what is missing from 'Work' is any sign of social change or class struggle. This is
why some art historians have found the picture 'uncommitted' and rather mild in
its social criticism. (Brown was a left-winger but a reformist rather than a
revolutionary.)
arises: How accurate, complete was his representation? Judging from the reviews of
Brown's cast of characters, and in particular those that personify noble toil. The
Victorians because their muscle power built the roads, canals, public works, and
railways of industrial Britain. They were an elite amongst manual labourers: they
were stronger, more highly paid, and better fed than most other workers. (Always
providing they avoided being killed or injured at work or worn out with toil early.)
lived an outdoor life, worked, played and drank hard. Railway navvies were to
some extent feared by the public because they assembled in large gangs far from
the centres of authority. Small armies of navvies could and did terrorize rural
areas with virtual impunity from the law and riots between rival gangs of English
and Irish navvies were commonplace. But, as time passed, they became an efficient
and disciplined workforce which the country was proud to send abroad. During
the war against Russia - which occurred whilst Brown was designing 'Work' - a
team of navvies was sent to the Crimea to build a rail supply link for the British
troops. Cartoons of the period show that public opinion regarded them as more of
apt one even though from the perspective of the twentieth century the more typical
manifestation of industrial Britain was the factory hand. (By 1900 very large bodies
of navvies were no longer needed; their tasks were completed and muscle power was
the picture even though its most characteristic manifestation - factory production -
is not represented. It was the North of the country which experienced a really
violent transformation, hence Londoners such as Brown were shielded to some
extent from its impact. This may be one reason why Brown picked the navvy as the
archetypal representative of British workers rather than the less glamorous factory
obtain a cheap and tractable workforce, mill owners frequently recruited their
picture: the only women workers depicted are marginal figures (the orange girl, an
old woman carrying an election board); the three major female characters arc all
ladies of leisure. If Brown had chosen factory hands as the epitome of noble labour,
his task would have been much more difficult; furthermore, he would have had to
abandon the outdoor setting because factory work did not take place in the fresh air
under blue skies. On the other hand, an indoor location would have prevented
theme of 'Work'.
A whole book would be required to examine the significance of all the characters
in 'Work', therefore, in this article, I will focus on the topic of the ideology of work.
Stitching in a tailor’s swaetshop
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Work-work-work
Work-work-work
Stitch-stitch-stitch,
It is clear from this quotation that not all Victorians subscribed to Carlyle's
gospel of work which Brown's painting relayed so uncritically. The questions arise:
To whom was this gospel addressed? Who were the audiences for Past and Present
and 'Work'? Who felt the need of such a gospel? It seems highly unlikely that
because they had to work to live (being landless and propertyless, they had only
their labour-power to sell in the marketplace). If they refused to work their only
reasonable to assume that the gospel of work was produced by and for a middle
class which, having presided over, and benefited from, the creation of an
and dangerous jobs, wished to justify to itself all forms of labour. Some middle class
Victorians, of course, were genuinely concerned about the poverty, inequality and
exploitation which marred their society, but they differed amongst themselves as to
what remedies were needed. A number were in favour of doing nothing because any
interference with the laws of the marketplace and free trade would aggravate
matters. Some were in favour of no-strings acts of charity and philanthropy. And
some were in favour of limited acts of assistance, for example loans, and legislation
to control trade. The great fear of the first and last groups was that of undermining
the nation's economy and the self-reliance of the workers by means of excessive
charity. (If workers learned that they could live on charity, then they would lose the
desire to, and habit of, work.) The puzzle was how to help the workers to help
themselves without in the process making them dependent upon their benefactors.
(All these issues and problems arose again in the 1970s and 1980s.)
Neither Carlyle nor Brown were sufficiently conscious of the differences between
work and play, between forced and voluntary labour, and between useless and
industrialisation and the increased division of labour associated with it: factory and
decreased, workers increasingly sought enjoyment during leisure hours. During the
1840s, the difference between forced and voluntary labour was discussed but by a
compulsory toil the most cruel. degrading punishment. Nothing is more terrible than
being constrained to some one thing every day from morning to night against one's
will. And the more a man the worker feels himself, the more hateful must his work be
to him. because he feels the constraint. the aimlessness of it for himself. Why does he
work? For love of work? From a natural impulse? Not at all! He works for money. for
a thing which has nothing whatsoever to do with work itself, and he works so long.
moreover, and in such unbroken monotony. that this alone must make his work a
torture ... The division of labour has multiplied the brutalizing influences of forced
work. (The Condition of the Working Class in England; 1st German edition 1845.)
some decades later by William Morris in his pamphlet Useful work versus Useless
Toil (1885).
Portrait of William Morris, (1877). Elliot and Fry. Walthamstow, William Morris
Gallery.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
not mention Carlyle by name): it has become an article of the creed of modern
morality that all labour is good in itself - a convenient belief to those who live on the
labour of others. He then undertakes a socialist critique of capitalism and blames the
existence of so much useless toil on this economic system. Morris argues that work
should be pleasurable in itself, and result in socially useful goods. (That Brown was
explaining 'Work', he cites the classic example of useless work in Victorian times -
the crank. This was a machine with a handle which criminals in prison were
compelled to turn as a form of exercise and punishment; the crank had no other
the mass of kitsch and shoddy goods so prevalent in Victorian times. The work ideal
which Morris had in mind when making his criticisms was, of course, his own
multifarious practice as poet, prose writer, lecturer, designer, craftsman, printer and
political activist. His essay includes a number of sensible and practical suggestions
as to how this state of affairs could be achieved and the problem of unpleasant tasks
overcome.
Work, for Victorian manufacturers, (their own and that of their employees) was
the means to self-enrichment and self-improvement; hence, the logical necessity for
monopoly as the workshop of the world, that ideology was justified by the
empire. Today, that monopoly has gone for ever and with it the certainty that work
is noble. On the one hand, those in work. are urged to become more productive, to
work harder, in order to save the country's economy from ruin, whilst on the other
situation. (Or compelled to seek work which does not exist.) Workers are also told
that as a result of automation and new technology, jobs are disappearing and that in
the future work as we know it will be performed by only a small minority. The
ideology still holds sway amongst many politicians, employers and trade union
leaders, and it is still directed at the labour force. However, it is an especially cruel
ideology when received by the unemployed: if men and women achieve nobility
through work, then what is the fate of those for whom there is no work? If work is
becoming a scarce resource, should it not be more fairly distributed among the
populace along with wealth? If that were to occur, then all workers could enjoy a
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
This is a revised version of an article that was first published in the British art
magazine Artery, Vol 8 nos 1/2, May 1984, pp. 17-19. It was written during the
published as Work: Ford Madox Brown’s Painting and Victorian Life, (London:
John A. Walker is a painter and art historian. He is the author of many books and
articles on contemporary art and mass media. He is also an editorial advisor for the
website:
"http://www.artdesigncafe.com">www.artdesigncafe.com</a>