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Topics

Law and order

  • Summary
Justice
Image credit: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Justice

Franco/Flemish School

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Artists of everyday life in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries often revelled in the lawlessness of daily life, depicting bad behaviour and public drunkenness with wit and humour. On the other hand, religious paintings provided lessons in good behaviour and its heavenly rewards and punishments.


Formal salaried policing began in the early nineteenth century in the UK’s largest cities.

Read more
Justice is dispensed by appointed individuals, or by the public represented in a jury. Because of their importance to society, all these roles and processes have been depicted in art: the abstract personification of Justice herself with her scales, policemen on the beat and portraits of bewigged judges, scenes of courts at work, and, perhaps most frequently, prisoners and prisons.

Artworks

  • Sir Russell Bencraft, JP
    Sir Russell Bencraft, JP Frank Thomas Copnall (1870–1949)
    Southampton City Art Gallery
  • Alderman Frederick A. Dunsford, JP
    Alderman Frederick A. Dunsford, JP Leonard Frank Skeats (1874–1943)
    Southampton City Art Gallery
  • Alderman Sir Sidney Kimber, JP
    Alderman Sir Sidney Kimber, JP Thomas Cantrell Dugdale (1880–1952)
    Southampton City Art Gallery
  • Justice
    Justice Franco/Flemish School
    Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
  • Sir James Lemon, JP
    Sir James Lemon, JP Leonard Frank Skeats (1874–1943)
    Southampton City Art Gallery
  • The Poacher's Daughter
    The Poacher's Daughter Archibald John Stuart-Wortley (1849–1905)
    Usher Gallery
  • Smugglers' Look Out
    Smugglers' Look Out James Alfred Aitken (1846–1897)
    Warrington Museum & Art Gallery
  • 453 more

Stories

  • The Guitar Player
    The Vermeer that links a psychic, a stately home and the IRA

    Jade King

  • Vandalised 'Rokeby Venus', 1914
    Fighting for representation: suffragettes and art vandalism

    Victoria Ibbett

  • Gloriana and the Virgin Queen: portraits of Elizabeth I

    Rosanna Lawton

  • The Mona Lisa on display in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, 1913
    Art Matters podcast: lost art, forgeries and the theft of the 'Mona Lisa'

    Ferren Gipson

Learning resources

  • screenshot-2022-10-31-at-11-55-43-3-1.jpg
    Video
    Sculpture in focus: 'Writ in Water' by Mark Wallinger
    • KS3 (ENG)
      KS3 (NI)
      CfE L3 (SCO)
      KS3 (WAL)
      KS4 (ENG)
      KS4 (NI)
      CfE L4 (SCO)
      KS4 (WAL)
      KS5 (ENG)
      KS5 (NI)
      CfE Sen. (SCO)
      KS5 (WAL)

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Art UK is the operating name of the Public Catalogue Foundation, a charity registered in England and Wales (1096185) and Scotland (SC048601).

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® is a registered trade mark of the Public Catalogue Foundation.
Art UK is the operating name of the Public Catalogue Foundation, a charity registered in England and Wales (1096185) and Scotland (SC048601).