The Last of England (painting)
| The Last of England | |
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| Artist | Ford Madox Brown |
| Year | 1855 |
| Medium | Oil-on-panel |
| Dimensions | 82.5 cm × 75 cm (32 in × 29 in) |
| Location |
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 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.
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.
Although Ford Madox Brown was never a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, The Last of England, like many of his paintings, exhibits all the characteristics of the movement. 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. The family's clothing indicates that they are middle class, 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
The fair-haired child in the background behind the man's shoulder is Brown and Emma's child, Catherine, who was born in 1850. The baby concealed under the woman's cloak, and whose hand she is clasping, is supposedly their second child, Oliver.
In order to mirror the harsh conditions in the painting Brown worked mostly outside in his garden, and was happy when the weather was poor — he recorded his feelings of delight when the cold turned his hand blue, as this was how he wanted it to appear in the painting. He was seen as strange by his neighbours who saw him out in all kinds of weather. He composed a short verse to accompany the painting in which the woman is depicted as hopeful for the future:
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