Note 22 to Chapter 4 of the author's George Eliot and the Visual Arts, which Yale University Press published in a 1979. It has been included in the Victorian web with the kind permission of the author, who of course retains copyright.
Joseph Hornung (1792-1870) was a Swiss painter and the mentor of George Eliot's friend d'Albert-Durade. Thomas Pinney (Essays, p. 270) associates Eliot's "group of chimney-sweepers" with Hornung's The Little Chimney-sweep. The scene in Luckie Mucklebackit's cottage occurs in chapter 31 of Scott's The Antiquary, and contains a famous allusion to the Scottish genre painter, David Wilkie: "In the inside of the cottage was a scene which our Wilkie alone could have painted, with the exquisite feeling of nature that characterises his enchanting productions." The scene in Kingsley's Alton Locke (chap. 11) contains a good deal of picturesque description.
Last modified 20 September 2000