A Son of the Soil, by James Collinson (1825-1881). 1856. Oil on canvas. 12 x 9 7/8 inches (30.5 x 25 cm). Collection of Manchester Art Gallery, accession no. 2003.31. Reproduced here under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (CC BY-NC-ND).
Collinson exhibited this painting at the British institution in 1856, no. 375, the first work that he exhibited there. The title suggests that the man portrayed had been raised in an environment of agricultural labour. It shows a manual worker seated in a pub drinking beer from a pewter tankard with engraving on it. He is wearing a green jacket, a red vest with a black diamond pattern, and a blue cap. A neckerchief is around his neck while a soiled white labourer's smock hangs over his right shoulder. His right hand is extended in front of him pointing to the two coins to pay for his drink, while his left hand holds the handle of a spade. On the wall behind the workman is a poster advertising for labourers to join the Army Works Corps in the Crimea. Men were needed at that time to build a railway from Balaclava to Sebastopol to facilitate the movement of troops and supplies. The Crimean War ended in the year this painting was exhibited.
When it was exhibited it was not widely reviewed despite its obvious merits as a work of social realism. Collinson's old friend W.M. Rossetti, in The Spectator, admired the attention to detail Collinson put into this genre work painted in an early Pre-Raphaelite manner of pure glazes over a white ground: "Mr. Collinson's Son of the Soil – a lusty labourer seated in a public-house with his pewter pot of beer before him, and behind him an advertisement for men to serve in the Army Works Corps – is an exact study from nature" (195).
According to Helen Newman, this painting my later have sold under the titles The Labourer and The Volunteer.
Bibliography
Newman, Helen D. James Collinson (aka "The Dormouse"). Foulsham: Reuben Books, 2016. 111-12.
Peattie, Roger W. "W. M. Rossetti's Reviews of James Collinson." The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies V, no. 2 (May 1985): 101-02.
Rossetti, William Michael. "Fine Arts. The British Institution. The Spectator XXIX (16 February 1856): 195-96.
A Son of the Soil. Art UK. Web. 2 March 2924.
Created 2 March 2024