#british

Reviewers gave it a kicking when it first went on show, until Ruskin wrote to The Times to spell out what all the overgrown weeds and the handle-less door were meant to mean — after that it caught on enormously, and he painted later versions that were sent round the world. He's said to have done the night parts outdoors in an orchard, sitting out through winter to get the light right.

He spent his career on music halls and rented rooms rather than polite society portraits, and the sitter here was apparently a young Belgian woman he painted more than once around that time. There's also a small industry of writers who've tried to pin the Whitechapel murders on him — nothing proved, but the story trails his name around.

It's watercolour on paper rather than a painting in oils, which explains how thin it all looks. He earned his living engraving other people's designs and sold almost nothing of his own while he was alive. The scene's out of A Midsummer Night's Dream, from what I can tell.

The woman here was apparently an artist herself — an etcher — and by most accounts pretty private, which makes it interesting she agreed to sit for this at all.