Home from Work [or Evening]. Arthur Hughes (1832-1915). c.1870. Oil on canvas, H 75 x W 106.5 cm. Collection: Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum, accession number: BORGM 01112. Purchased from George Knight, 1932. Kindly made available by the Gallery on the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence. Image acquisition (via the Art UK website), commentary and formatting by Jacqueline Banerjee. [Click on the image for a larger picture.]
Here is another of Hughes's "engagingly fresh landscapes" (Wildman), again with nearly every element that the Times obituary found in his most appealing work: "No artist ever painted spring meadows, country children, and frisking lambs, with more evident delight." However, the lambs are replaced here by a milk-white calf, while the blossom and cowslips, the latter mostly picked and strewn carelessly on the grass, give an extra fillip to the scene. The way the child reaches out to her weary-looking father, as he returns from his wood-gathering with her older brother, is especially touching. So too is her elder sister's affectionate watchfulness. The general sense of harmony between domestic and natural life, of everything thriving together, is very cheering. Such an atmosphere is an added element that no amount of training can help a painter capture. It is no surprise to learn from Stephen Wildman that Hughes was a genial soul — modest, good-natured and "universally liked."
The gallery note explains the variation in the title of the painting: "When exhibited at the Royal Academy it was called Evening; at an exhibition in Glasgow in 1873 it was called After Work; it was referred to as The Return in a letter written by Ford Maddox Brown in 1886; and when sold in 1921 it was re-titled Home from Work. "
Bibliography
Home from Work [Evening]. Russell-Cote. Web. 7 March 2025.
"Mr. A. Hughes" (obituary). Times, 23 December 1915: 6. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 28 March 2019.
Wildman, Stephen. "Hughes, Arthur (1832–1915), painter." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Online ed. Web. 28 March 2019.
Created 28 March 2019
Last modified 7 March 2025