Summary
Around 1807, Mulready’s subject matter, previously consisting mostly of landscape and cottage views, began to include narrative genre scenes. These often depicted low-life domestic incidents set in rustic interiors, and The Rattle was his first important essay in this style. It was finished in January 1808 and exhibited at the British Institution shortly afterwards.
The Rattle depicts a simple, intimate scene from family life – a baby and his older brother playing with a toy. Mulready’s meticulous attention to detail, sombre colouring and the dramatic play of light on the figures and objects in the scene – the jug and playing cards on the floor, for example – indicate his debt to Dutch seventeenth-century painting. It is known that Mulready saw and copied works by Dutch and Flemish artists in private collections such as that of Sir Robert Peel (1788–1850), a later patron… (read more)
Other works of art you may be interested in
