The escape: a young girl with a bird cage
1836
- 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
- 18th & 19th Century Decorative Arts & Paintings Gallery
Level 2, NGV International
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. Soyer is reputed to have drawn more than one hundred skilful portraits from life before she was twelve. In 1837, she 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 400 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
Gift of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program, 2024
Level 2, NGV International