"Omnibus Life in London" by William Maw Egley (1826–1916) (original) (raw)

Commentary

William Maw Egley (1826-1916) exhibited this picture at the British Institution in 1859, no. 318. While Egley is perhaps better known for his historical or literary paintings, he also painted modern-life genre scenes. Sarah Wooten has commented on the reason for their popularity: "Most of Egley's contemporary scenes, such as Omnibus Life in London, achieved widespread acclaim as they affirmed the social self-fashioning of the middle class" (136). In this painting Egley shows us the claustrophobic interior of an omnibus, a large horse-drawn carriage used to transport people around London. By 1850 there were three thousand in service in the metropolis. Scenes such as this would have been very familiar to the populace at this time where individuals from all social classes were forced to sit together. Aided by the conductor a young woman with her umbrella tries to board, although the compartment is already overcrowded. Passengers include an elderly lady with her baggage, including a bouquet of flowers, who is looking at a young mother with her small son held in her lap. A smartly dressed middle-aged man also looks kindly at the child. An elegant young city clerk with his cane pressed against his lips looks across at a pretty young woman reading a book. Egley apparently painted the carriage in a coachbuilder's yard. He then "posed models in a makeshift 'carriage' made from boxes and planks in his back garden in Paddington" [Tate Britain label].

Mary Cowling in her book Victorian Figurative Painting points out the value of such Victorian genre paintings in giving us an insight into life at the time:

"Egley's Omnibus Life in London provides us with one of those hard-edged, hallucinatory glimpses of Victorian life which seem to encapsulate the past exactly as it was; in this case, at one particular moment in 1859 in Westbourne Grove. It is a novel and topical subject, showing one of those microcosms of modern life which were created by the constant flux within the crowd. The dramatic viewpoint draws the spectator deeply into the crowded interior to focus on the various individuals who make up this heterogeneous assemblage. It includes, front left, a respectable but flustered servant clutching at a superfluidity of baggage; a somewhat fastidious, gentlemanly type in grey; two women, one of them an attractive widow eyeing the pretty girl opposite sympathetically; a young city clerk…vacantly sucking his cane as he gazes entranced at the same girl; and to the right, Egley's own young wife, accompanied by her docile daughter and sturdy infant son, struggling wilfully on her lap, armed with his tin drum and sticks. It is invaluable record of social types and fashions of 1859, but was also recognized by Frederick [sic] George Stephens as a nice little piece of psychology: 'a subtle little bit of character cleverly worked out'; and is indeed a revealing insight into how women were perceived in the Victorian age. Carried away by the superlative detail, one might be forgiven for overlooking the psychological drama, which Stephens noted, and which centres on the pretty young married woman who folds her parasol prior to entering the bus. On this occasion she hesitates, surprised; for her entrance has failed to cause the usual stir. Engaging the attention of the occupants of the bus is someone even prettier: the young woman at the far end of the right-hand seat; the epitome of sweet, innocent girlhood; her exquisite features protected but not concealed by a white veil. For all her greater assurance, the young married woman cannot begin to compete. Even the idea of women competing in such circumstances strikes a foreign note now. Much as we admire prettiness, women's role is no longer merely decorative. No girl, however attractive, would cause such a stir today, nor expect to. The virtues celebrated in the younger girl are also revealing of the time: delicacy, shyness, and above all, modesty; virtues which were central to the Victorian feminine ideal, and highly attractive to men, but which are at a marked discount today. [105-06]

The painting proved popular and was published as a wood engraving by The Illustrated London News on 11 June 1859, p. 553. A critic for the same magazine had earlier reviewed the painting when it was shown at the British Institution:

Omnibus Life in London (318), by W. Maw Egley, is a droll interior, the stern and trying incidents of which will be recognized by thousands of weary wayfarers through the streets of London. There, crowded together higlgledypiggledy, is all the miscellaneous assemblage of old women, young misses, City swells, babies, baskets, bundles, crinolines, umbrellas, &c., which ordinarily fill up the measure of these convenient vehicles; whilst the inexorable conductor peeps in through the door and announces "room for one more," a young lady already ascending the steps with ample allowance of luggage to fill it. [210]

A critic for The Art Journal recorded how Egley painted this scene with almost Pre-Raphaelite precision: "No. 318. Omnibus Life in London, W. M. Egley. Painfully true it is – that is, the picture; but the title would lead a Frenchman to believe that Londoners inhabit omnibuses. The perspective crowds these poor people cruelly close. The whole of the detail, however, has been most carefully studied" (82).

Egley may have been the first but he was certainly not the only painter to feature contemporary life on an omnibus in his paintings. Thomas Musgrove Joy's The Charing Cross to Bank Omnibus of c.1861, Alfred Morgan's One of the People – Gladstone in an Omnibus of 1885, and George William Joy's The Bayswater Omnibus of 1895, are other well-known examples.

Bibliography

Cowling, Mary. Victorian Figurative Painting. Domestic Life and the Contemporary Social Scene. London: Andreas Papadakis Publisher, 2000.

"Exhibition of the British Institution." The Illustrated London News XXXIV (February 26, 1859): 209-10.

"The British Institution." The Art Journal New Series V (March 1, 1859): 80-83.

Wood, Christopher. The Pre-Raphaelites. New York: Crescent Books, 1981, 65-66.

Wooten, Sarah. "William Maw Egley's 'The Lady of Shalott." Tennyson Research Bulletin VII, no. 3 (November 1999): 132-140.

Created 5 July 2018

Last modified 15 July 2024 (new commentary added)