William Morris and Red House

A number of sources give good summaries of the life of Ford Madox Brown. See below for:

Victoria Web - Ford Madox Brown

Wikipedia - Ford Madox Brown

The present extract is taken, with thanks, from Jan Marsh, The Pre-Raphaelites ( p31-32), 1998, NPG

Let the artist spare neither time nor labour, but exert himself beyond his natural energies, seeking to enter into the character of each actor, studying them one after the other, limb for limb, hand for hand, finger for finger, noting each inflection of a joint, or tension of a sinew, searching for dramatic truth internally in himself, and in all external nature, shunning affectation and exaggeration, and striving after pathos and purity of feeling, with patient endeavour and utter simplicity of heart.

(Ford Madox Brown, The Germ, 1850)

A statement of early Pre-Raphaelite principles, this was also the individual manifesto of an artist whose serious and sustained practice was a bulwark of the movement yet who seldom features as a leading light. Too serious perhaps, too committed to dramatic truth and purity of feeling, with a certain temperamental inability to please the public, Brown's earnestness is brilliantly captured in the drawing shown here.

Brown was Rossetti's colsest and most steadfast friend - 'by far the best man I know, the really good man' - whose own life was threaded with tragedy. His first wife, Elizabeth, died young, leaving a small daughter Lucy. Lonely and struggling, Brown began a relationship with a model named Emma, who bore a daughter, Cathy. Later, Brown and Emma married and had two sons; one died in infancy and the other at age 20. Brown suffered from melancholy, painting hinself in The Last of England as a reluctant, scowling emigrant forced by poverty to leave his homeland.

His best known painting is Work, a crowded street scene of Victorian social classes, from ragged beggar and stalwart navvy through to fashionable ladies and leisured gentlemen. Brown's heroes were Thomas Carlyle, who preached the gospel of self-help and useful work, and Oliver Cromwell, puritan and regicide.

In middle years, living in Fitzroy Square, he became seriously sociable, and a valued partner in the Morris firm, desinging stained glass and furniture. He was also a sympathetic teacher, instructing several younger Pre-Raphaelities, including his daughters, and Georgiana Burne-Jones and Marie Spartali, who wrote: '....it was Madox Brown who encouraged me to become an artist and who taught me to paint and I can neveer feel sufficiently grateful for his having given this immense interest in my life.'