The Irish Girl

Ford Madox Brown, 1821–1893

1860

Oil on canvas laid on board

Yale Center for British Art

A young girl with dark, unruly hair looks away from the viewer, holding a single blue cornflower. She is wrapped in a red shawl with a paisley pattern. The cornflowers this young street vendor holds to her chest are for sale, and the paisley red shawl around her body is a type often made by child laborers, many of whom were Irish immigrants to Britain. Brown encountered this sitter while looking for subjects for Work, a larger painting about labor and class in Victorian England that he completed in 1865. Originally, The Irish Girl formed a pair with The English Boy, which depicts the artist’s five-year-old son wearing a hat and a smock and holding his toys. The two give contrasting views of childhood: his hair is brushed, hers is wild and unkempt; his gaze is innocent, hers is wily