Ford Madox Brown

Ford Madox Brown, born in Calais, had studied art in Antwerp under Egide Charles Gustave Wappers.

In 1843, he had submitted work to the Westminster Cartoon Competition, for compositions to decorate the new Palace of Westminster.

He was not successful.

His early works were, however, greatly admired by the young Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who had asked him to become his tutor.

Through Rossetti, Brown had come into contact with the artists who went on to form the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB).

Though closely linked to them, he is never actually a member of the brotherhood itself.

Nevertheless, he remains close to Rossetti, with whom he had also joined William Morris's design company, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., in 1861.

He is a close friend of the landscape artist Henry Mark Anthony.

Brown was also the main organizer of the Hogarth Club, a short lived replacement for the PRB that exists between 1858 and 1861.

One of his most famous images is The Last of England, which had been sold in March 1859 for 325 Guineas (2010: £25,800).

It depicts a pair of stricken emigrants as they sail away on the ship that will take them from England forever.

It was inspired by the departure of the Pre-Raphaelite sculptor Thomas Woolner, who had left for Australia.

The painting is structured with Brown's characteristic linear energy, and emphasis on apparently grotesque and banal details, such as the cabbages hanging from the ship's side.

Thomas Carlyle’s last major work is the epic life of Frederick the Great (1858–1865), another study of the possibilities of the great man in history.

In this, Carlyle tries to show how a heroic leader can forge a state, and help create a new moral culture for a nation.

For Carlyle, Frederick epitomizes the transition from the liberal Enlightenment ideals of the eighteenth century to a new modern culture of spiritual dynamism: embodied by Germany, its thought and its polity.

The book is most famous for its vivid, arguably very biased, portrayal of Frederick's battles, in which Carlyle communicates his vision of almost overwhelming chaos mastered by leadership of genius.

Carlyle calls the work his “Thirteen Years War” with Frederick.

In 1852, he had made his first trip to Germany to gather material, visiting the scenes of Frederick's battles and noting their topography.

He had made another trip to Germany to study battlefields in 1858.

The work comprises six volumes; the first two volumes had appeared in 1858, the third in 1862, the fourth in 1864 and the last two in 1865.

The work is studied as a textbook in the military academies of Germany.

The effort involved in the writing of the book has taken its toll on Carlyle, who has become increasingly depressed, and subject to various probably psychosomatic ailments.

Its mixed reception also contributes to Carlyle's decreased literary output.

Work, a painting by Ford Madox Brown, is generally considered to be his most important achievement.

It attempts to portray, both literally and analytically, the totality of the Victorian social system and the transition from a rural to an urban economy.

The painting had been commissioned by Thomas Plint, a well-known collector of Pre-Raphaelite art, who died before its completion.

Brown had begun the painting in 1852 and completes it in 1865, when he sets up a special exhibition to showcase it along with several of his other works.

Each character represents a particular social class and role in the modern urban environment.

He writes a detailed catalogue explaining the significance of the picture.

The picture depicts a group of so-called "Navvies" digging up the road to build a system of underground tunnels.

It is typically assumed that these were part of the extensions of London's sewerage system, which were being undertaken to deal with the threat of typhus and cholera.

The workers are in the center of the painting.

On either side of them are individuals who are either unemployed or represent the leisured classes.

Behind the workers are two aristocrats on horseback, whose progress along the road has been halted by the excavations.

The painting also portrays an election campaign, evidenced by posters and people carrying sandwich boards with the name of the candidate "Bobus".

A poster also draws attention to the potential presence of a burglar.

The scene is set on The Mount on Heath Street in Hampstead, London, a side road which rises up from the main road and runs alongside it.

Brown had made a detailed study of the location in 1852.

Brown's concern with the social issues addressed in Work prompts him to open a soup kitchen for Manchester's hungry, and to attempt to aid the city's unemployed to find work by founding a labor exchange.