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The Last of England

Ford Madox Brown, 1855

Oil-on-panel

82.5 × 75 cm, 32 × 29 in

Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham, United Kingdom

The Last of England is an 1855 oil-on-panel painting by Ford Madox Brown depicting two emigrees leaving England to start a new life abroad.

Brown began the painting in 1852 inspired by the departure of his close friend, the Pre-Raphaelite sculptor, Thomas Woolner, who had left for Australia in July of that year. Emigration from England was at a peak, with over 350,000 people leaving that year, and Brown who at the time considered himself "very hard up and a little mad" was thinking of starting over in India with his new family.

Although Ford Madox Brown was never a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, The Last of England like many of his paintings exhibits all the characteristics of the movement. The painting depicts a man and his wife leaving England for the last time. The two main figures, based on Brown and his wife, Emma, stare ahead stony-faced, ignoring the white cliffs of Dover which can be seen disappearing behind in the top right of the picture. The clothing indicates that family are middle class, so are not leaving for the reasons that would force the emigration of the working classes; Brown's writing touched on the same theme:

The educated are bound to their country by quite other ties than the illiterate man, whose chief consideration is food and physical comfort

The fair-haired child in the background behind the man's shoulder is Brown and Emma's child, Catherine, who was born in 1850. The hand of the baby, which can be seen clasped by the woman, is supposedly that of their second child, Oliver.

In order to mirror the harsh conditions in the painting Brown worked mostly outside in his garden, and was happy when the weather was poor — he recorded his feelings of delight when the cold turned his hand blue, as this was how he wanted it to appear in the painting. He was seen as strange by his neighbours who saw him out in all kinds of weather. He composed a short verse to accompany the painting in which the woman is depicted as hopeful for the future:

…She grips his listless hand and clasps her child,
Through rainbow tears she sees a sunnier gleam,
She cannot see a void where he will be.

Finished study for the painting

Two finished versions of the picture exist, one in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and the other in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. A watercolour replica of the painting in Birmingham produced between 1864–6 is held by the Tate Britain. A fully worked study also exists, and a detailed compositional drawing. All are in the form of round panels, a rarely-revived Renaissance format called a tondo, but differ in colouring.

The picture was voted Britain's eighth favourite picture in a poll carried out by BBC Radio 4.

• [1]Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery, Last of England Online

• Stephen Farthing (Ed.) (2006). 1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die. London: Quintet Publishing Ltd. ISBN 1-84403-563-8. 
• Greatest Painting Vote. BBC. Retrieved on 28 December 2006.