Arthur Hughes - April Love - Google Art Project

''Stages of Cruelty'' is an oil-on-canvas painting by Ford Madox Brown. He worked on the painting over an extended period, from 1856 to 1890. It is held by the

Manchester Art Gallery Manchester Art Gallery, formerly Manchester City Art Gallery, is a publicly owned art museum on Mosley Street in Manchester city centre. The main gallery premises were built for a learned society in 1823 and today its collection occupies three c ...

. The painting was originally entitled ''Stolen Pleasures are Sweet'', but became ''Stages of Cruelty'' by about 1860. The composition was inspired by Arthur Hughes's 1856 painting '' April Love'', which shows a woman turning away from her lover after an argument, and also by William Hogarth's series of engravings ''

Four Stages of Cruelty ''The Four Stages of Cruelty'' is a series of four printed engravings published by English artist William Hogarth in 1751. Each print depicts a different stage in the life of the fictional Tom Nero. Beginning with the torture of a dog as a c ...

''. Like Hogarth's series, Brown's painting shows separate episodes in the life of the same character, although in this case on the same canvas, with a cruel child growing up to become a cruel adult. In Brown's painting, a girl in a red dress and a white bonnet is shown sitting at the bottom of a flight of stone steps, spitefully hitting her bloodhound with a stem of love-lies-bleeding while the dog raises a paw in protest. Behind her, sitting on a brick wall beside the stairs, a young woman is turning away from a man hidden in a

lilac ''Syringa'' is a genus of 12 currently recognized species of flowering plant, flowering woody plants in the olive family or Oleaceae called lilacs. These lilacs are native to woodland and scrub from southeastern Europe to eastern Asia, and wid ...

bush behind the wall. The man her lover looks mournfully over a wall at the woman, grasping her right hand and arm, but she rejects him without remorse. She wears a white jacket, with lace collar and cuffs, and a long blue skirt; some red flowers, perhaps

geranium ''Geranium'' is a genus of 422 species of annual, biennial, and perennial plants that are commonly known as geraniums or cranesbills. They are found throughout the temperate regions of the world and the mountains of the tropics, but mostly in ...

s, are tucked into her jacket, and she holds a piece of unfinished embroidery in her left hand. To the right, bindweed ( convolvulus) climbs up the balustrade beside the stairs. The flowers are symbolic, reflecting their accepted meanings in the Victorian language of flowers. The love-lies-bleeding stands for hopeless; the purple lilac for first love; and the bindweed (convolvulus) for extinguished hopes. One of the meanings of geraniums is deceit. The young girl was initially modelled on Brown's second daughter Catherine, and later on Catherine's own daughter Juliet. Brown started the work without a commission, and then it languished for many years. It was eventually finished for the brewer,

Henry Boddington Henry Albert Boddington (15 June 1863 – 22 March 1938) was a New Zealand cricketer. Life and career Boddington was educated at Nelson College from 1877 to 1880. He worked in New Zealand branches of the Bank of New South Wales for 40 yea ...

. Watercolour versions of the painting are held by

Tate Britain Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in ...

and the

Ashmolean Museum The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology () on Beaumont Street, Oxford, England, is Britain's first public museum. Its first building was erected in 1678–1683 to house the cabinet of curiosities that Elias Ashmole gave to the University of ...

References

''Stages of Cruelty''
Manchester Art Gallery
''Art of Ford Madox Brown''
Kenneth Bendiner p.97-98
Chalk Drawing - ''Stages of Cruelty''
Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery
Watercolour - ''Stages of Cruelty''
Tate Gallery
Watercolour - ''Stages of Cruelty''
Ashmolean Museum
''Stages of Cruelty'' by Ford Madox Brown
BBC Your Paintings {{DEFAULTSORT:Stages of Cruelty 1890 paintings Paintings by Ford Madox Brown Collection of Manchester Art Gallery Dogs in art Paintings of children

See also

References