ford madox brown - eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

the six subjects allowed Brown to allude to Queen Victoria and the House of Lords by
depicting a strong female leader surrounded by her advisors. This allusion is lost on
Bendiner who focuses instead on the fact that the helpless widow is separated from
the figures of Justice by 'a set of obstacles: a rich man who grasps his money bags, a
prince who appears bored, and ecclesiastics who look on with complacency.' 58 A
closer examination of the composition reveals that the 'rich man,' the Baron's father,
may have wealth but is separated from Justice by the 'Barons armed for the
maintenance of Justice.' 59 This implies that in front of Justice and her advisors, who
sit high up, overlooking the situation, his money is useless and that the widow is
protected by the systems of Justice, an appropriate sentiment for the House of Lords.
Certainly, this is how Brown's contemporaries perceived his entry. An outline
engraving of the cartoon was included in Frederick Knight Hunt's The Book of Art:
Cartoons, Frescoes, Sculpture and decorative Art as applied to the new Houses of
Parliament (Fig. 6) which would have been unlikely to illustrate a polemical entry.
The Art Union singled it out for praise, dedicating almost as much space to reviewing
it as to entries by those already commissioned to paint the compartments such as
Edward Armitage and William Cave Thomas (1820-1906). To them 'this cartoon is
singularly full of material, the whole of which contributes fittingly to the main
purpose.' 60 This quotation reveals that they believed Brown had created a design
appropriate to its surroundings, the House of Lords. They also recognized that the
design was 'a constitutional, and not a moral, representation of Justice' and felt that in
this way 'the spirit of the work differs from every other in the series: it presents a
version of Justice in reference to the sources of the executive power of our
58 Op. cit. at note 56, p. 90.
59 Op. cit. at note 32, p. 181.
60 The Art Union, vol. 7, no. 82, 1 May 1845, p. 258.
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