George Aldolphus Storey - Orphans

Price Realized £71,700

signed and dated 'G. A. Storey./1879' (lower left)
oil on canvas
40¾ x 50 3/8 in. (103.5 x 128 cm.)

London, Royal Academy, 1879, no. 80

During the nineteenth century there was widespread concern for the plight of homeless and destitute children. One of the few caring institutions and almost the only one to support illegitimate children, was the Foundling Hospital. This had been established in 1739 by Thomas Coram, a sea captain, and the first Hospital was built in 1745 in Lamb's Conduit Fields. Its many patrons included George Frederick Handel, Thomas Gainsborough and William Hogarth. The boys were trained as apprentices to a trade or encouraged to join the army as band boys and the girls were taught domestic skills to fit them for work as maids. Until the mid-1870s, such institutions held orphan or charity 'elections' in which candidates were given places based on how much money and votes they received from affluent patrons. In the 1870s various asylums for girls were being established, the first of these was Dr. Barnardo's first home for girls, opened in London in 1873.

The theme of orphans appeared frequently in the literature of the nineteenth century, such as Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe in Villette, Cathy in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist and David Copperfield and Esther Summerson in Bleak House. They were also popular subjects with Victorian genre and social realist painters but the treatment varied enormously. A decade earlier than Storey's painting, the history painter Edward Matthew Ward had depicted Hogarth's Studio in 1739 - Holiday Visit of Foundlings to View the Portrait of Captain Coram (1863) which shows a happy crowded scene intended to appeal to lovers of both children and English art. The chaotic and carefree atmosphere of Ward's painting is very different from the earlier work by Emma Brownlow King entitled The Foundling Restored to its Mother (1858; Thomas Coram Foundation for Children, London). King was the daughter of a man who was admitted as a foundling in 1800 and had risen to become Secretary to the Governors. Her painting is executed with tender emotion and shows a little girl restored to her mother whose eyes are full of tears and whose hands are outstretched in anticipation. It is King's first-hand experience and personal involvement that makes her painting so moving.

Storey's work is positioned between these two approaches. Whilst there is no evidence that he ever had any experience of an orphanage, there is a convincing sombreness to his painting, the mood of the girls echoed by their black clothing. However, this is not the harsh depiction of a social realist painter - the orphans are in immaculate white and green outfits, in a sunlit room, overseen by a kindly elder girl; the building appears spacious and clean and the door opens to a sizeable garden with countryside beyond. Exhibited at the RA in 1879, the critic of the Art Journal was moved by Orphans, describing it as 'very touching and tender in sentiment... Two sweet little girls in deep mourning have been ushered into the apartment which will be their future schoolroom; and three other little orphans, in their Asylum dress, look up from the desk and regard them with feelings of interest and sympathy.' However, the Illustrated London News found it overly sentimental - 'a mildly pathetic picture of two orphan girls in mourning brought by an elder sister or governess, also in black, to an orphan school, the habituées of which eye the newcomers with childish interest.'

As far as legal and charitable institutions were concerned, orphanhood was mainly a lower class condition as middle and upper-class orphans had appointed guardians and were therefore assimilated into other families. It is interesting that Storey has chosen to depict new arrivals who appear from their clothing to be middle-class. Girls without guardians or wards were considered especially vulnerable in the 19th century as they lacked male protection. The only man visible in this work is the porter carrying their trunk who will shortly leave.

Storey had received tuition in art in Paris between 1848 and 1850 whilst he was at school. On his return to London, he met Henry Stacy Marks, George Dunlop Leslie and Philip Hermogenes Calderon, all of whom became members of the St John's Wood Clique. He studied first with J.M. Leigh and then at the Royal Academy Schools. His work was strongly influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite style until he went to Spain in 1863 for a year. On his return he discovered that the Tudor and Stuart subjects of his friends amongst the Clique were immensely popular and whilst not wanting to paint historical genre, he studied the costume, architecture and accesories of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In 1866 when the Clique spent the summer at Hever Castle in Kent, Storey painted his imitation of the Dutch seventeenth century genre paintings of Pieter de Hooch and Gerard Ter Borch entitled Children at Breakfast and a similar humorous subject After You. His most successful 'Dutch' painting is The Duet (1869; Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery) which relates closely to the interiors and subjects of Ter Borch. Although the narrative content is essentially Victorian, the present composition shows stylistic influence from the Dutch tradition, particularly the light coming in through the open doors, the tiled floors and the casement windows.