ford madox brown - eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

first seeds of English Protestantism. It was not just in his history pictures that he
combined the Gothic revival with Protestantism. In 1847 he designed the cartoon
Oure Ladye of Saturday Night (Fig. 7 and cat. nos. 102-113) depicting, in the
foreground, a medieval Madonna-like mother washing her child aided by an angel
and, in the background, an angel helping a toddler say prayers. The whole
composition is framed in a gothic arch and resembles a Venetian altarpiece, with a
sheet of exquisite cloth hung behind the Madonna. 85 In the catalogue of his 1865 solo
exhibition Brown explained that after his trip to Italy the art he saw 'had made a deep,
and as it proved, lasting impression on me' and that the cartoon was 'little more than
the pouring out of the emotions and remembrances still vibrating within me of Italian
Art. To look at it too seriously would be a mistake.' 86 Because of its Catholic-
looking Gothicism he took great pains to stress the Protestant nature of his inspiration
claiming that 'It was neither Romish nor Tracterian, nor Christian Art … In idea the
children are modern English, they are washed, powdered, combed, and begowned,
and taught to say prayers like English Protestant babes.' 87 As such this cartoon was
his earliest attempt to fuse the Gothic revival with Protestantism, an idea he continued
in Chaucer and Wycliffe.
Brown’s two later scenes from English history were directly inspired by Thomas
Carlyle’s On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History (1841) and Oliver
Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches (1845). Between 1853 and 1874 he painted St Ives,
AD 1630. Cromwell on his Farm (Fig. 81). In these works Cromwell is depicted as a
85 Also known as Oure Ladye of Good Children.
86 Op. cit. at note 37, p. 4.
87 Ibid., p. 5. In this context Brown's reference to 'Christian Art' refers to the Catholic Nazarene
movement. Although it must be remembered that he wrote the catalogue entry almost twenty years
after he first began the cartoon, it is likely that his explanation of his inspiration was unchanged and
that he saw himself as a Protestant Englishman.
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