Marie Bourke looks at the career of William Mulready, a painter of genre, landscape and informal portraits, as well as an illustrator, art advisor and art educator
William Mulready was a successful painter of everyday scenes of ordinary life, often referred to by the French term ‘genre painting’. When this new type of art appeared on the walls of the Royal Academy (RA) in 1809 it was described as ‘compositions in the EPIC of common life’ and included, among other themes, depictions of the rural poor. Scenes illustrating everyday life offered an insight into early 19th-century Britain, which was being shaped by radical economic transformations, the growth of the railways, revolutionary politics and war. Mulready, who largely ‘passed through life as a drawing-master,’ was one of the artists whose work documented the new modernity.
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