The escape: a young girl with a bird cage
1836
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
75.4 × 62.6 cm irreg. (image) 76.0 × 63.2 cm (canvas)
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Gift of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program, 2024
Gallery location
Not on display
About this work
Emma Soyer (nee Jones) was a child prodigy during the late Georgian and early Victorian eras. She studied initially under the Belgian painter François Simonau, who had married her widowed mother in 1820. In 1837 Soyer married the renowned chef Alex Soyer; she was pregnant with his child when she died unexpectedly in 1842, aged twenty-eight. Her obituaries record that she had made more than four hundred paintings by the time of her death, and critics compared her expressive work to that of the Spanish master Murillo. The escape is a classic Victorian ‘loss of innocence’ painting, full of energy and pathos.
Artwork Details
Place/s of Execution
London, England
Inscription
inscribed in brown paint l.r.: E. Soy (…illeg.) fecit / 1836.
Accession Number
2024.7
Department
International Painting