Left: Home from Work, c.1860-61. Oil on canvas. 41 x 32 inches (104.2 x 81.3 inches), arched top. Private collection. Image courtesy of Christie's, © 2003 Christie's Images Limited (right click disabled; not to be downloaded). Right: Preliminary Study for Home from Work. Pen and brown ink on paper. 4½ x 3¼ inches (11.1 x 8.4 cm). Collection of the British Museum. Image © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence. [Click on the drawing for a larger image.]
Hughes exhibited this painting at the Royal Academy in 1861, no. 624, where it was purchased by the collector James Leathart. Leathart subsequently lent it to the International Exhibition held at South Kensington in 1862, no. 438, and then the Exposition Internationale held in Paris in 1867, no. 51. It formed a very appropriate pendant to Hughes's The Woodman's Child, also owned by Leathart, despite the disparity in their sizes. The picture was greatly admired by D.G. Rossetti and his friends as well as by visitors to the Royal Academy exhibition. On 10 May 1861 Rossetti wrote to his friend William Allingham; "The Academy is rather seedy, only has a refreshing look through being more fairly hung than usual…. Hughes has got a good place & looks very well indeed with a picture of a Labourer's return to his family" (letter 61.23, 357). On 19 May 1861 Rossetti wrote to Leathart: "The other day I had a call from a Mr. Heaton [John Aldam Heaton], of Yorkshire - hitherto a stranger to me. Like the rest of the world now, he had an Academy Catalogue in his hand, and we began talking about the Show there. The first picture I happened to name was Hughes's, whereupon he turned to his Catalogue, and showed me that he had marked it as Best. I believe you will find many to congratulate you as its possessor" (letter 61.26, 362).
John Christian has referred to this work as one of Hughes's most charming conceptions: "The picture takes its place in a long series of works in which Hughes demonstrates his astonishing ability to capture innocence, whether embodied, as here, in children, or, as in the famous April Love of 1856 and many others" (111). Susan Casteras referred to this painting as an intensely poetic paean to paternal affection:
As a glowing sun sets in the distance, a woodsman has returned home. He is met by two children, one a handsome child in a white nightgown who exuberantly hugs him around his neck and stands on tip-toe for a kiss. While the father is grubby and weary, the child is almost angelic in appearance and emanates love and life into the twilight environment.... In Home from Work, the father is ruddy and rather grimy, but his honest toil is rewarded by a warm welcome home at day's end. At the doorway is an adolescent girl described by the Athenaeum as "a sweet English girl of twelve, rosy with health and fair"…. She has presumably been taking care of the younger children (the mother is absent, perhaps dead) as a surrogate mother and keeper of the hearth…. In all the tranquil domesticity and sanctity of the family are celebrated as cardinal virtues and goals for all social classes, in this case, agricultural workers in their modest cottages" (91-92). Casteras felt that the arched format along with the ivy-covered wall of Home from Work was indebted to J. E. Millais's "A Huguenot of 1852 while there might also be parallels of pose and characters with Millais's Rescue of 1855 and Autumn Leaves of 1856. She also pointed out the possible symbolic meaning of the foliage in Hughes's picture where, for example, the ivy is emblematic of fidelity while the crocuses have connotations of youthful gladness and mirth [91-92].
The preliminary pen and brown ink drawing in the British Museum (registration no. 1916,1115.2) reveals that Hughes originally had a very different conception of the picture. In this drawing the father is portrayed standing with the child in his arms while a cat rubs against his legs. The older sister is not present.
Contemporary Reviews of the Painting
The painting was, in general, well received, although not without its critics, when it was shown at the Royal Academy in 1861. The Times admired "the sentiment of father and child so deeply felt and beautifully expressed" (6). The critic for The Art Journal showed once again that he was not fond of the style of the Pre-Raphaelite school of painting:
Home from Work, No. 624, A. Hughes, is one of the most intense and one of the best specimens of Pre-Raphaelitism in the room; but the artist owes less to his own inherent vigour than to his recollection of autumn leaves, which this No. 624 is a mere recollection in colour. Some of the details are carefully painted, and there is good feeling in the face of the child and father; but the former would not have been a whit less kissable, had it been moderately good-looking – nor would the feeling have been less effective, had it been painted with a firmer touch, instead of being stippled in style. This rage for ugliness and stiffness is, however, the cant of the school, and sects are nothing without their shibboleth. [197)]
F.G. Stephens in the Athenaeum liked the work except for the colouring, which he felt gave it somewhat of a stained-glass appearance:
Mr. A Hughes, whose April Love all remember with delight, has Home from Work (634), a subject representing the return of a woodman to his home at sunset, just when the children are going to bed. One of these, an infant in a long white bedgown, has dashed out to meet the tall, wrinkled, stalwart man just as he entered the garden-gate, and now, upon the brick pavement at the porch, stands tip-toe for a kiss, its pretty arms eagerly around the parent's rough neck. An elder sister, a sweet English child of twelve, rosy with health and fair with good Saxon blood, looks on, half-proud with sympathy, half-patronizingly, and pleasantly loving in her happiness. The daylight sinks behind the garden-bounding trees in ruddy light, and brings them out against the sky. We think this picture is somewhat over-coloured in the half tints – hence a certain look of glass-staining character, otherwise it is solidly and broadly painted, and delightful for the loving feeling and characteristic expression. The infant is quite kissable. [666]
A reviewer for The Illustrated London News found the colour lurid but a typical example of the Pre-Raphaelite school:
How apt our young artists are to imitate one another, and how easy it is to imitate 'manner,' and particularly a manner of excess, is illustrated in a strongly-painted little picture which catches our gaze as we take our departure through the south room. It is painted by A. Hughes, and is entitled Home from Work (624). We have a wood-cutter, in a russet dress, and with an extremely red face, returning from work, about to embrace his child, who is clad in a thick flannel wrapper, and attended by a young girl in plumb-coloured apron. The intense elaboration of the outline, in every detail, and the lurid glare which pervades the whole, are such as the painters' art never displayed before the nineteenth century; and yet such things as this are commonly spoken of by the ignorant as examples of a "pre-Raphaelite" school. [595]
W. M. Rossetti felt this was the soundest painting Hughes had yet executed:
Mr. Hughes is the only representative of pure unadulterated Pre-Raphaelitism. While other members of the clique have modified their manner or sunk into nothingness, he alone remains true to his early creed. Very beautiful is Home from Work (624). The manner of its painting might be objected to, the stippled execution and the resolute desire to see purple in everything; but I respect that sunburnt, horny-handed labourer who throws down his axe and fagot by his cottage door, and with rude but fond embrace presses the tender lips of his young child against his weatherbeaten careworn face. This is the soundest picture Mr. Hughes has painted, and in point of interest is far, far beyond the mawkish sentiment of April Love.[587]
Bibliography
Casteras, Susan. The Defining Moment. Victorian Narrative Paintings from the Forbes Magazine Collection. Charlotte Carolina: Mint Museum of Art, 1999, cat. 27.
Christian, John. The Forbes Collection of Victorian Pictures and Works of Art I. London: Christie's (19 February 2003): cat. 13. 108-11.
"Exhibition of the Royal Academy." The Art Journal New Series VII (1 July 1861): 193-98.
"Fine Arts. The Exhibition of the Royal Academy." The Illustrated London News XXXVIII (22 June 1861): 594-95.
Roberts, Len. Arthur Hughes His Life and Works. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collectors' Club, 1997, cat. 50. 149.
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel. The Correspondence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The Formative Years, II. 1855-1862. William E. Fredeman Ed. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2002, letter 61.23, 356-57 and letter 61.26. 361-62.
Rossetti, William Michael. "Fine Arts. Royal Academy." The Spectator XXXIV (1 June 1861): 586-87.
"The Royal Academy Exhibition." The Times (3 May 1861): 6.
Stephens, Frederic George. "Fine Arts. Royal Academy." The Athenaeum No. 1751 (18 May 1861): 665-68.
"Study for the painting "Home from work" British Museum. Web. 7 March 2025.
Created 7 March 2025