George Elgar Hicks presents an idealized version of an English working-class family. With a look of steadfast determination, a heroic navvy sets out for his day of manual labor, his shovel hung from the pickax resting on his shoulder. His adoring wife sees him off before attending to the neat cottage behind them, complete with a willowpattern dinner service on the shelves. At the navvy’s feet is his son, still too young to wear trousers, whose toy shovel implies he will follow in his father’s footsteps.
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Accession Number
B2003.14
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Title
The Sinews of Old England
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Date
1857
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Materials & Techniques
Watercolor, graphite, gouache, gum arabic, and scraping out on moderately thick, slightly textured, cream wove paper
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Dimensions
Sheet: 29 1/2 × 20 7/8 inches (74.9 × 53 cm), Frame: 43 x 33 1/2 x 3 3/4 inches (109.2 x 85.1 x 9.5 cm)
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Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering
Signed and dated in brown watercolor, lower left: "G.E.Hicks. 1857"
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Credit Line
Yale Center for British Art, Friends of British Art Fund
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Copyright Status
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Classification
Drawings & Watercolors
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Collection
Prints and Drawings
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Subject Terms
baby | door | family | genre subject | girl | home | laborer | love | pickaxe | portrait | sinews | worker
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Access
Accessible in the Study Room [Request]
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Link
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Export
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IIIF Manifest
A Decade of Gifts and Acquisitions (Yale Center for British Art, 2017-06-01 - 2017-08-13) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]
Recent Acquisitions - Summer 2005 (Yale Center for British Art, 2006-05-19 - 2006-08-14) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]
Rachel Gotlieb, Ceramics in the Victorian era : meanings and metaphors in painting and literature, London, 2023, pl. 9a-b, NX650.P623 G68 2023 (YCBA) [YCBA]
Andrea Korda, Printing and painting the news in Victorian London : the Graphic and social realism, 1869-1891, Ashgate Publishing, Burlington, 2014, pp. 122-24, 174, 177, fig. 4.2, ND467.5.V52 K67 2014 (YCBA) [YCBA]
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