(After) The Friend in Need

Rebecca Solomon (1832-1886)

1859

Wood engraving

Source: The Met Museum

The engraving comes originally from Illustrated London News, and the museum website explains that it was published there "to mark the painting’s exhibition in 1859 at the gallery of Louis Victor Flatou, a London dealer who offered art lovers an alternative to the Royal Academy." [Commentary continues below].

Image download. text and formatting by Jacqueline Banerjee

Image identified by the Met Museum as being inb the public domain. Click on the image to enlarge it.

The museum website describes this as a genre painting, explaining that "a destitute mother and child seek charity outside a public institution (a poster suggests a missionary society), but are shooed away by a beadle, as a sympathetic woman and girl offer assistance." The ceremonially dressed beadle is reminiscent of the beadle in Dickens's Oliver Twist, and suggests all the pomp and remoteness of officialdom. Notice that the charitable woman has laid one hand on his sleeve to stop his dismissive gesture, and that her daughter looks solemnly and not quite directly at the woman, as if she wonders what kind of people we are, who let others suffer like this — or is she perhaps looking to some higher source of comfort? The poor woman herself clutches a tiny baby to her breast and seems to be almost swooning. It is clear, hoever, that help is now at hand, despite the disapprovalof the beadle (the title suggests a hopeful outcome). This might be a contemporary scene but it is enacted these days too in almost any high street, except that the the beadle would be represented by uncaring passers-by, the women and young girl would be quite differently dressed too, and the person in need of charity might be trying to sell a copy of the The Big Issue (a magazine sold at a small profit by homeless or otherwise needy vendors) instead.

Bibliography

The Friend in Need, from The Illustrated London News, April 23, 1859. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Web. 2 October 2021.

Created 2 October 2021