ford madox brown - eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

Construction: The Practicalities
Research
Brown's drawings, in combination with his diary and his article for The Germ, ‘On the
Mechanism of a History Picture: Part A. the design,’ provide unrivalled insights into
his approach to the practical construction of a history painting. By the mid-nineteenth
century there was considerable pressure on artists 'from scholars and public alike that
paintings should be an accurate record of the past'. 96 Brown readily obliged,
undertaking a vast amount of research to make every area of his painting as
historically accurate as possible and using the new wider range of history books
available. To choose a suitable subject Brown consulted history books, poring over
them for initial inspiration and then using them for further research. Having chosen a
subject the first step he took was ‘to make himself thoroughly acquainted with the
character of the times, and the habits of the people' he was about to represent. 97 To do
this he used contemporary historical sourcebooks to gain further information on the
historical events, costume, accessories and architecture necessary to paint a
convincing scene. As the nineteenth century costume historian Frederick Fairholt
stated these books were often 'expressly designed for the use of artists' and were
meant to help them avoid anachronisms. 98 In the introduction to Henry Shaw's
Specimens of Ancient Furniture (1836) Sir Samuel Rush Meyrick, warned that
96
Op. cit. at note 1, p. 72. This was largely due to the increasing amount of research undertaken and
published by historians.
97
Op. cit. at note 2, p. 70.
98
Frederick William Fairholt, 'Notes on British Costume, Part the First,' in The Art Union, vol. 4, no.
45, 1 October 1845, p. 223.
107