"For Only One Short Hour"" by Anna Elizabeth Blunden

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"For Only One Short Hour"

Anna Elizabeth Blunden (Mrs. Martino), 1830-1915

Oil on canvas

18 ½ x 15 ½ inches (47 x 39.4 cm)

Signed and dated 1854

Exhibited: Society of British Artists, Suffolk Street. 1854, No. 133.

Courtesy of the Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund. B1993.23.

This painting is often referred to as The Seamstress and A Song of the Shirt after Thomas Hood’s famous protest poem, 'Song of the Shirt.'” [Commentary continues below.]

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“Several Victorian painters took up the defence of the overworked and exploited seamstress, in particular Richard Redgrave. This picture, like Redgrave's, is inspired by Hood's poem 'The Song of the Shirt,' first published in Punch in 1843. Miss Blunden developed a crush on Ruskin, and pestered him with letters asking for help and advice (published by Virginia Surtees in Sublime and Instructive, 1972.” — Christopher Wood, Blessed Damozel.

Bibliography

The Blessed Damozel: Women and Children in Victorian Art. London: Christopher Wood Gallery, 1980. No. 4.

Wood, Christopher. Victorian Panorama — Paintings of Victorian Life, 1976, plate 130.

Created 19 January 2002

Last modified 24 March 2022