Terms and conditions of use
To the workhouse
1891
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
91.0 × 61.2 cm
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Gift of Mrs Emma a'Beckett, 1893
Gallery location
Not on display
About this work
In 1890 Emma Minnie Boyd and her husband Arthur Merric Boyd moved to England. Here, she found a new, striking subject for her painting To the workhouse, having been best known for her interiors depicting women at leisure. In this painting – which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in London the following year – Boyd depicts an elderly couple, finally defeated by poverty, trudging along a snow-covered street toward the workhouse. Dickensian social-realist themes had been popular with European and English artists throughout the mid nineteenth centruy, but the subject still had resonance into the 1890s when this work was completed.
Artwork Details
Place/s of Execution
London, England
Inscription
inscribed in grey paint u.l.: E. M. Boyd / 91.
Accession Number
p.399.4-1
Department
Australian Painting
This digital record has been made available on NGV Collection Online through the generous support of The Vizard Foundation
Subjects (general)
Emotions and Mental States Human Figures
Subjects (specific)
elderly melancholy poor (people) snow (precipitation) spouses workhouses (institutions)
Frame
Original, by Gill’s Fine Art Gallery, Melbourne
Frame
This is the only labelled frame by this maker in the collection. The frame is an example of the possible variations on the classical revival style. The address on the label appears to date the frame some fifteen years after the work was acquired. An inscription in pen and ink on the reverse of the lower back edge reads: This Frame Made For W. A. C. a’ Beckett For The picture to The WORKHOUSE By Mrs. Emma Minnie Boyd, leaving little doubt the painting was framed prior to acquisition. This anomaly between dating frame makers’ addresses from business directories and the other evidence related to the work is not un-common.
Note
1 Hilary Maddocks, ‘Picture Framemakers in Melbourne c. 1860–1930’ in vol. 1, Frames, Melbourne Journal of Technical Studies in Art, University of Melbourne Conservation Service, 1999.
Frame Details
Framemaker
Gill's Fine Art Gallery
No 1 Chapel Street, East St. Kilda, Melbourne
Date
(1908–12)1
Materials
Made up from composition ornaments on a wood chassis, the torus of the frame is laurel and berry banded at the centres and corners. There is a burnished gilded taenia at the sight edge. The slip is water gilded.
Frame Condition
The frame has been over-painted with gold coloured paint from the sloping inner edge through to the working edge.
Dimensions
123.0 x 93.0 x 12.5 cm; sight 90.0 x 60.0 cm