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Lot Essay
Born on March 13, 1824 in Lymington, Hampshire, George Elgar Hicks was the second son of a wealthy magistrate. His parents encouraged the young Hicks to become a doctor and sent him to study medicine at University College, London from 1840-1842. However, after three years of 'arduous and disagreeable study' the young man decided he wanted to become an artist. Therefore, Hicks began training considerably later in life than most artists of his time. In 1843, Hicks attended Sass's Academy and by 1844 had entered the Royal Academy Schools.
Greatly influenced by the work of William Powell Frith (1819-909), Hicks began exhibiting at the Royal Academy in 1847. His artistic career had two distinct phases, first as a painter of modern life subjects in the 1850s and 1860s and later as a society portrait painter from the 1870s until his virtual retirement in the mid-1890s. Painted in the early 1870s, The Journey Home clearly spans both of these creative phases in the artist's career.
The present work is an intimate depiction of two young girls, who may be the artist's daughters, who have nodded off to sleep in a train carriage. Artists of the Victorian era were fascinated with the train as 'just as Britain was the cradle of the Industrial Revolution, so it was also the cradle of the railways. In its formative years from about 1830 to 1850, the railway network in Great Britain grew faster than in any other European country' (I. Kennedy, The Railway: Art in the Age of Steam, Kansas City and Liverpool, 2008, p. 45). This industrial phenomenon not only altered previously held concepts of space, time and movement, but also became the ideal lens through which the Victorian eye could study the intermingling of the classes. Because the railway was used by all the classes, it was regarded as a social leveler. Hicks appreciated this reality, since despite the young girls' obvious modest social status, as conveyed by their simple and unadorned attire, their undeniable beauty and implied innocence elevates them to subjects worthy of the public's attention.
In the artist's ledgers reprinted in George Elgar Hicks, Painter of Victorian Life (London, 1982), Hicks lists the subject painting under the heading '1893': The return home - Two girls asleep in a railway carriage - 26½ by 20 - Sold to Messrs Rowney R Co - £70. This was the third highest price of the year. The Rowney business was an artists' supplies dealer with origins in the 18th century and, although no longer in family hands, still exists today. The company underwent many manifestations since its inception in 1789, but by the time the company purchased Hick's painting, it was held under George Rowney & Co (1848-1923). In Henry Mayhew's chapter on Rowney in The Shops and Companies of London (London, 1865) he notes the emergence of a new branch of the business in 1851: chromolithography. George Rowney likely recognized the broad appeal of The Return Home and intended to disseminate the image to the public through mass reproductions.
Greatly influenced by the work of William Powell Frith (1819-909), Hicks began exhibiting at the Royal Academy in 1847. His artistic career had two distinct phases, first as a painter of modern life subjects in the 1850s and 1860s and later as a society portrait painter from the 1870s until his virtual retirement in the mid-1890s. Painted in the early 1870s, The Journey Home clearly spans both of these creative phases in the artist's career.
The present work is an intimate depiction of two young girls, who may be the artist's daughters, who have nodded off to sleep in a train carriage. Artists of the Victorian era were fascinated with the train as 'just as Britain was the cradle of the Industrial Revolution, so it was also the cradle of the railways. In its formative years from about 1830 to 1850, the railway network in Great Britain grew faster than in any other European country' (I. Kennedy, The Railway: Art in the Age of Steam, Kansas City and Liverpool, 2008, p. 45). This industrial phenomenon not only altered previously held concepts of space, time and movement, but also became the ideal lens through which the Victorian eye could study the intermingling of the classes. Because the railway was used by all the classes, it was regarded as a social leveler. Hicks appreciated this reality, since despite the young girls' obvious modest social status, as conveyed by their simple and unadorned attire, their undeniable beauty and implied innocence elevates them to subjects worthy of the public's attention.
In the artist's ledgers reprinted in George Elgar Hicks, Painter of Victorian Life (London, 1982), Hicks lists the subject painting under the heading '1893': The return home - Two girls asleep in a railway carriage - 26½ by 20 - Sold to Messrs Rowney R Co - £70. This was the third highest price of the year. The Rowney business was an artists' supplies dealer with origins in the 18th century and, although no longer in family hands, still exists today. The company underwent many manifestations since its inception in 1789, but by the time the company purchased Hick's painting, it was held under George Rowney & Co (1848-1923). In Henry Mayhew's chapter on Rowney in The Shops and Companies of London (London, 1865) he notes the emergence of a new branch of the business in 1851: chromolithography. George Rowney likely recognized the broad appeal of The Return Home and intended to disseminate the image to the public through mass reproductions.