Past and Present, No. 3

Image credit: Tate

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This is the third of a set of three modern-life pictures on the theme of the fallen woman. The other two (N03278 and N03279) are also in the Tate collection. They are typical of the social moralist pictures that were popular in Victorian art. The theme of the triptych is the discovery of the woman's infidelity and its consequences. In the first scene the family are still together, and the husband has just learned of his wife's adultery. The second scene takes place five years later. The father has recently died and the mother has been driven out of her home, a fallen woman. The two orphaned girls comfort each other, the elder gazing sadly over the rooftops towards the moon. In this third picture the moon occupies the same position in the sky, indicating that the scene is taking place at the same time. The children's mother, now destitute, has taken refuge under one of the Adelphi arches, described by the Art Journal as 'the lowest of all the profound deeps of human abandonment in this metropolis' (quoted in Wood, p.53).

Tate Britain

London

Title

Past and Present, No. 3

Date

1858

Medium

Oil on canvas

Measurements

H 63.5 x W 76.2 cm

Accession number

N03280

Acquisition method

Presented by Sir Alec and Lady Martin in memory of their daughter Nora 1918

Work type

Painting

Inscription description

date inscribed

Tate Britain

Millbank, London, Greater London SW1P 4RG England

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