ford madox brown - eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

was the romantic and comic aspects of Sterne's work which resuscitated interest in A
Sentimental Journey. In 1830 Gilbert Stuart Newton exhibited Yorick and Grisette at
the RA (Fig. 65). This scene, depicting Yorick's encounter with an attractive glove
seller, was the subject of at least ten paintings over the next forty years. During this
time, other scenes involving Sterne's male characters in romantic situations were also
popular with artists. 149 This indicates that the emphasis had changed from
sentimentality to comic romance. The fact that Brown produced two works on paper
for scenes from A Sentimental Journey suggests that he was inspired by his
contemporaries working in England and that these were studies for a possible series.
By the mid-nineteenth century Maria was once again a familiar character. Between
1830 and 1870 she was depicted in at least fifteen paintings. In the short period
between 1839 and 1842, alone, there were three paintings of her exhibited at the
RA. 150 Although Brown did not live in England during this period he visited his
relatives in Kent and may well have seen these paintings at the Royal Academy
exhibitions. His choice of subjects whilst living in Paris show how well he knew
current artistic trends in England. His figure of Maria plays up the pathos of the
scene; her expression is meek and sad, and her body fragile and languid but unlike her
early persona her beauty is now tinged with madness. W. B. Gerard discusses the
149 These included H. J. Townsend, Sterne and Maria (exh. RA 1839 (493); C. R. Leslie, Uncle Toby
and the Widow Wadman (1842, oil on canvas, Tate, London); and T. H. Wilson, Yorick and the Fille de
Chambre (exh. RA 1844 (86)). See op. cit. at note 145, pp. 270-272 for the large number of paintings
of scenes from Sterne exhibited at the RA and other venues in the years before 1842.
150 The paintings were: H. J. Townsend, Sterne and Maria, no. 493, accompanied by the quotation:
'"Her goat had been as faithless as her lover; and she got a little dog in lieu of him, which she kept tied
by a string to her girdle; as I looked at her dog, she drew him towards her with the string. 'Thou shalt
not leave me, Sylvio,' said she. I looked in Maria's eyes, and saw she was thinking more on her father
than her lover, or her little goat." - Sentimental Journey' (Op. cit. at note 26, 1838, p. 25); T. Uwins,
Maria, no. 92, '"Poor Maria is sitting upon a bank, playing her vespers upon her pipe, with her little
goat beside her." Tristram Shandy, vol. vi., chap. 44;' and J. G. Middleton, Maria-Sterne's Sentimental
Journey, no. 296 (ibid., 1842, pp. 8 and p. 18).
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