Punch and Judy
Arthur Boyd Houghton (1836-1875)
Oil on canvas
c.1860
Support: 356 x 254 mm; frame: 495 x 394 x 47 mm
Collection: Tate
Purchased 1922
Reference: N03620
Despite the title, what we see here is not the Punch and Judy show itself, but the crowd gathered in front of it (and perhaps the shadow of the puppeteer behind the curtain, and a glimpse of Mr Punch at the very top). The spectators include the pretty young woman standing on the far right, a boy burdened with a wicker-basket in front of her, a mother and some children of various ages, and some cheeky-looking lads. [Commentary continues below. Mouse over the text for links.]
Image kindly released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported) license.
At the back is a young man in uniform, identified by the gallery label of 2007 as a lamp-lighter, but he is not exactly a spectator — at least, he is not watching the performance. Rather, he is looking towards the pretty young woman. Another young woman, hanging on his arm in a propriety fashion, also looks at the girl. She has followed his gaze.
Close-up of the central part.
There is more of this kind of curious by-play: a boy on his hands and knees grubbing around in front of the Punch and Judy stall, an urchin whispering to his companion, a woman with a young child in her arms at the back (towards the left), men talking or passing by.at the back, and, right next to the stall, a man playing a harmonium. As the label says, "Houghton was known for his small oil paintings of vivid scenes of life in Victorian London, which were partly inspired by the eighteenth-century artist, William Hogarth," and there is certainly something here of the strange and strained co-existence of the sublime and the grotesque which is found in the work of the eighteenth-century artist. But there seems to be no moral purpose, just an artist's keen eye for the incredible diversity and vitality to be found on London's streets. Since, on the whole, "Victorian artists shunned the direct reportage of urban realities" (see Lambourne 132-33), this in itself is very welcome. — Jacqueline Banerjee
Related material
- William Hogarth: In between the Sublime and the Grotesque
Bibliography
Lambourne, Lionel. Victorian Painting. London and New York: Phaidon, 1999.
Last modified 1 June 2018