The Nature of Common Life: Drawing the Everyday 1800–60

Sweet little exhibition at Tate Britain of drawings by artists wanting to make ordinary life a subject for art.

Some of the works were social comment on topics such as the decline in rural life but others were just recording what was going on around the artist.

I loved Arthur Boyd Houghton’s pictures of his children and a lovely picture of a woman lying on a sofa with her feet over the arm, a very unVictorian pose. A Constable of three girls at a harpsichord was pure Austen.

I liked the inclusion of a sketch of a photographer by William Henry Hunt which I am sure was just a record of life at the time but seems to be a lovely comment on where art was going to go.

 

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