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Notes
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An interior of a small cottage: the simple furnishing, flaking plaster and exposed brickwork suggest rural simplicity and poverty. A young man has entered through the door, wearing the characteristic dress of a sailor: a blue jacket with brass buttons, a white shirt, red neckerchief and loose short-legged trousers which expose stockings and buckled shoes below. In his right hand he holds a tarpaulin hat full of coins. His left hand is raised with the palm open towards a girl seated on a low chair by a bed holding a sick older figure. With her right hand she holds the hand of the bed-ridden patient, probably intended to be her parent. The artist has used the language of pose and gesture to convey a narrative. The sailor holds out his hatful of money towards the girl, the implication probably being that he went to sea to earn enough money for them to marry.
In this painting Wheatley is concerned with the psychological relationship between the subjects as well as domestic detail and costume. The work marks a shift from a Hogarthian concentration of genre in the cause of harsh moral social satire towards a gentler, sweeter style. Wheatley implies that a society which was uncomfortably aware of the sufferings of the rural poor, brought about by the agricultural revolution, sought compensating reassurance in depictions of an idealised pastoral life.
Title
The Sailor's Return
Date
1786
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
H 47 x W 38.1 cm
Accession number
BHC1076
Work type
Painting
National Maritime Museum
Romney Road, Greenwich, London, Greater London SE10 9NF England
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