One of the Family

The title of this painting refers to the white horse which stretches its head through the open door to be fed. The scene is based on a room in the Black Boys Inn at Hurley-on-Thames, and the figures were modelled by members of the Street family, owners of the inn. The work was one of the first ‘subjects of popular character’ purchased for the Walker Art Gallery by its first curator, as he wrote, to ‘give great pleasure to the numerous visitors of the Gallery who are uninitiated in the higher forms of art’.