Monday, January 5, 2009

James Campbell - Girl with Jug of Ale and Pipes



Oil on board 38.7 cm x 30.5 cm (15 1/4" x 12")
Inscribed and dated on verso 1856
Walker Art Gallery
.
1828 - 1893.
James Campbell son of a Liverpool insurance clerk, studied at the Liverpool Academy and at the Royal Academy. For a few years from about 1856-1862 he was influenced by Pre-Raphaelite ideas without however becoming involved in the gravity or moral earnestness of subject that others pursued. His was ultimately more a flirtation with the technical side of Pre-Raphaelite practice. The best of Campbell's little pictures are delightfully straightforward and minutely detailed accounts of respectable lower-middle class and artisan life in Liverpool. He is the most Dickensian of all the Pre-Raphaelites.

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