The Last of England, by Ford Madox Brown

Ford Madox Brown (1821-93) was born in Calais, France, to British parents, his father being a retired ship’s purser. He gained his training as an artist in Belgium and France before settling in London in 1844.

He was closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood led by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Brown’s use of bright colours and choice of romantic themes from English history and literature was a strong influence on his younger contemporaries. In return, their emphasis on objective realism, as opposed to Victorian sentimentality, influenced his own work.

“The Last of England”, painted in 1855, is a scene of emigrants on board ship as they leave for Australia to seek their fortune, possibly in the goldfields there. Many people did so at the time, with some 65,000 being recorded as making the voyage in just one year, namely 1852. Ford Madox Brown was inspired to paint this work because one of his acquaintances, a sculptor named Thomas Woolner, had been one of that number.

The painting is nearly circular, as if the viewer is seeing the emigrants through a telescope from the clifftop near Dover as their ship heads down the Channel. The two main figures look back at nothing in particular, their faces sad and wistful as they realise that they will almost certainly never return.

The models used for the couple in the painting’s foreground are Brown himself and his second wife Emma, although they did not follow Thomas Woolner’s example and actually emigrate. The couple’s two young children also appear in the scene, with just the hand of their younger child visible as it is clutched by his mother’s hand under her cloak.

To add extra authenticity, and in order to achieve the impression of a dull day at sea, he did most of the painting outdoors with his hand barely able to keep hold of the brush for the cold. The reason why his self-portrait looks cold and miserable, despite wearing a thick brown overcoat and wide-brimmed felt hat, is that he was!

The couple huddle together under a large brown umbrella which the man holds to protect his wife and himself against the sea-spray being whipped up by a strong wind that is making the sea choppy and the woman’s bonnet ribbon stream out sideways.

There are other travellers to be seen in the background, also wrapped up warmly, but some of them are less concerned about their fate as they share a joke and grin at each other. Somebody is smoking a long clay pipe.

The married couple appear to be sitting right at the stern of the ship, as they are framed at knee level by a guard rope and net from which hang cabbages and other food items that are presumably being kept fresh and salted in the cold sea air.

It is hard not to shiver when looking at “The Last of England”, just as it is difficult not to share the mixed feelings of its subjects who hope for better things in the future but still regret leaving behind everything they have known in their lives so far.

As mentioned above the painting is nearly circular, but not quite. It measures 82.5 centimetres (32.5 inches) in height and 75 centimetres (29.5 inches) in width. It is part of the collection of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, which is free to enter.

© John Welford