Applicants for Admission to a Casual Ward by Sir Samuel Luke Fildes, R. A. (1844-1927). 1874. Oil on canvas. H 57.1 x W 94 cm. Collection: Tate, London. Accession no. T01227, purchased 1970. Reproduced via Art UK under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (CC BY-NC-ND). Image download and text by Jacqueline Banerjee, replacing original Art Annual engraving on this page.
As George Landow pointed out on the original version of this page in 2007, the oil painting was preceded by Fildes' 1869 engraving, Houseless and Hungry, that appeared in The Graphic. The earlier composition contains several figures that the artist reused: the man on the right part of the picture cradling his sick child, the man with top hat with his hands in his pockets, and the well-dressed woman the left, who is giving money to begging children.
Closer view of the two scenes mentioned above (left) the charitable woman, and (right) the father with his ailing child.
As for the oil version, Chloe Ward explains, this became the focus of a fierce controversy:
Weighing the significance of beauty against the ethical obligations of painting, critics came to diverse conclusions about whether the unromanticised representations of poverty that were appearing in social painting undermined or enhanced art’s influence at a time of increased social awareness. The concept of the picturesque became a natural locus for this discussion. Critics across the country sided either with the traditional picturesque that sought to prettify the messiness of poverty or with a Ruskinian concept of the ethical picturesque that objected to heartlessly ignoring the ugliness of poverty and instead emphasised the beauty that emerged from an aesthetic sensitive to social complexity. [22]
Related Material
- Gustave Doré, The Graphic, and Social Realism of the Seventies and Eighties
- Medicine and Medical Care in Victorian England (homepage)
- Hospitals in Victorian England (homepage)
- Public Health (homepage)
Bibliography
Thomson, David Croal. The Art Annual, 1895: The Life and Work of Luke Fildes, R. A. With numerous illustrations. London: The Art Journal Office (294, City Road, and 26, Ivy Lane), Christmas 1895.
Treuherz, Julian. "Luke Fildes: 'Dumb, Wet, Silent Horrors'" in Hard Times: Social Realism in Victorian Art. ed. Julian Treuherz. London: Lund Humphries, 1987. 83-89.
Ward, Chloe. Art and Action: Painting for Social Change in Victorian England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2026 [Review].
Created 27 May 2007
Last updated 30 October 2026