Frederic George Stephens

“ In 1843-4 Madox Brown was still in Paris, diligently copying old masters' pictures in the Louvre, studying from the life in the ateliers of his contemporaries, and ambitiously devoting himself to the preparation of works intended to compete at the exhibition in Westminster Hall. There, in 1844, Brown laid the foundations of his honours in artistic if not in popular opinion by means of a cartoon of life-size figures representing in a vigorous and expressive design the 'Bringing the Body of Harold to the Conqueror;' he also exhibited an encaustic sketch, and a smaller cartoon. ”

“ Death intervening, the commission thus offered was never completed, but with a portion of the money 'Christ washing Peter's Feet' was bought for the National Gallery, where it now is, the large cartoon of 'The Body of Harold brought to the Conqueror' was secured for the South London Art Gallery, and a number of designs, which are chiefly decorative, were bought and distributed among the art schools of England. ”

“ But in 1848 he was far in advance of the Pre-Raphaelites in his accomplishment as an artist, and their influence on him developed very gradually. Through 1848, the year in which the brotherhood was formed, it was not apparent at all. None of Brown's pictures, in fact, exhibited with signal effect that sort of realistic painting which is ignorantly supposed to have been the ne plus ultra of the Pre-Raphaelite faith, until the brotherhood was beginning to dissolve. ”