Montague Dawson The Americas Cup Race paintingFord Madox Brown Work painting
honestly depicts the reality of the Victorian working class. It has a very Hogarthian tone, and the message in his work has been compared to Hunt's in The Awakening Conscience. However Work obviously takes this realism further. Can it be said that this painting more honestly and directly expressed the artist's message, with many more publicly readable details than most social-realist Pre-Raphaelite works? Does this make his painting a more successful one in the eyes of the PRB? Or would they think it was too allegorically obvious?
2. The purposely overcrowded, busy composition separates the different classes -- how? Is it significant who is the center and who is on the periphery? Who borders the action and what are they doing?
3. althouhgh Brown does praise the lower class laborers in this painting, does he also condemn those above them in class? Hogarth often shows two differing portraits, with one being obviously positive and the other negative. Does Brown portray the middle and upper classes as necessarily idle or in a negative light? Or is he merely glorifying the virtue and importance of hard work?
4. Brown painted Work in Heath Street, Hampstead, near his home, which is reflected in its realism. Had he painted this scene indoors, and not from life, and without the intense attention to detail, would his moral message be as compelling?
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