ford madox brown - eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

four years earlier in 1865. 125 Like Brown's design, Pinwell's illustration 'Or sigh with
pity at some mournful tale' (Fig. 168) focuses on the theme of family life and is set in
the eighteenth century. 126 However, it is difficult to be sure that The Traveller was
based on poems by either Hugo or Goldsmith as neither appears to have included this
exact scene in his work. Brown most often took the literal approach to illustrating and
his designs complied with the text, including details referred to in the narrative, rather
than addressing the themes of the poem. This suggests that the exact source for The
Traveller has yet to be located.
Keeping to his entrepreneurial strategy Brown made two versions of The Traveller, a
watercolour, which according to his accounts, was painted in 1867 and sold to E.
Ellis; and an oil version begun in 1868 but not finished until 1884 when he sold it to
Henry Boddington (Fig. 169). 127
In 1871 Brown executed his last illustration for a periodical. He produced two
designs to illustrate Rossetti’s poem Down Stream which were engraved by C. M.
Jenkin (fl. 1871-1876) and published in the short-lived magazine The Dark Blue (cat.
nos. 76 and 77). 128 The poem tells the sad tale of a young woman seduced on a
boating trip on the first of May. She becomes pregnant but is abandoned by her
seducer and in desperation kills herself and her child on the first of June the following
125 Pinwell developed his first exhibited watercolour An Incident in the Life of Oliver Goldsmith
(private collection) from the themes and imagery he used in these illustrations (Pamela White Trimpe,
‘Pinwell, George John (1842–1875)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University
Press, 2004 (http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/22308, accessed 23 Oct 2008).
126 The illustration accompanied the lines:
Blest be those feasts, with simple plenty crown'd,
Where all the ruddy family around
Laugh at the jests or pranks that never fail,
Or sigh with pity at some mournful tale.
(Dalziels' Illustrated Goldsmith, London, 1865, pp. 177).
127 Op. cit. at note 36, p. 441. Both versions are now at Manchester City Art Gallery.
128 Op. cit. at note 104, pp. 135-136. See Appendix. Jenkin also worked for The Illustrated London News.
184