This portrait is of a lady called Margaret Maggott (1759-1848). She was known in Barnsley as Peggy Airey and was a local character. She would find and collect items that could be sold for small change and for a fee she would tell your fortune.

It is interesting to consider why Hold chose to paint these two people. Unlike many portraits it can be assumed that Peggy and Joe did not pay the artist to paint their likenesses. Maybe Hold felt that their popularity as local characters would ensure the paintings would sell. The artist Abel Hold was very prominent in Barnsley during the Victorian period.

He lived on Church Street (near to what is now the Cooper Gallery) for a few years and then moved to the village of Cawthorne close to the estate of Cannon Hall near Barnsley. Hold exhibited his paintings regularly at the Royal Academy from 1849-71. It is claimed that he never had an entry rejected. Hold was befriended by Rev. Charles Spencer Stanhope and then later Walter Spencer Stanhope of Cannon Hall became his patron. He was a popular and famous painter whose work was sought after during his lifetime.

This portrait is of a man called Joseph Broadhead (1772-1852) who made his living by selling water. When he started in 1816, Barnsley, like many other towns and cities, did not have a direct water supply so 'Watter Joe' would collect the water from a natural spring. With the assistance of his horse 'Old Duke' he would bring it to the people of Barnsley in exchange for payment. Joe was well known for his quick wit and his love of a drink.

Edward Charles Barnes painted mainly domestic and genre scenes, often featuring young women and children. He also painted some Spanish subjects in the manner of John Phillip and J B Burgess. Barnes exhibited at Suffolk Street and also at the Royal Academy from 1856-1882 and at the British Institute.

All the men are shown in seventeenth century style dress. This historical approach to painting was very popular in France in the mid 19th century. Little is known about Lefevre but he did exhibit some works at the Salon in Paris in the 1860s.

Pasmore exhibited many works at the Royal Academy in the mid 19th century and seems to have specialised in sporting themes and sentimental genre paintings both of which were very popular with Victorian collectors.

This portrait of Queen Victoria was painted by Parris when the young Victoria was on her first state visit to the theatre in Drury Lane, London. The picture was also reproduced as an engraving and was very popular in the period. The painting must have impressed Victoria and her court as the following year Parris was invited to paint the Queen on the occasion of her coronation.

In the 1912 inventory of S J Cooper's painting it is suggested that the sitter of the portrait is John Milton but this attribution does not fit well with the date of the picture. It is also unclear who the artist of the work is; the previous suggestions of A L Tempel or Simon Verelst do not seem appropriate for the style of the painting. John Michael Wright was a British artist who was influenced by the Dutch style of painting and this work seems similar in style to his other paintings.