1. Joseph Mallord William Turner The Slave Ship, full name, Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying—Typhoon Coming on (1840) Took place in 1783—the captain threw the slaves overboard to collect insurance on the claim that they were lost at sea. Ruskin wrote, “But I think the noblest sea that Turner has ever painted, and if so, the noblest certainly ever painted by man, is that of The Slave Ship.”

2. Sir John Everett Millais Christ in the Home of his Parents (1849) Notice the stigmata on the child. Many references to Jesus’s later life appear in this picture.

3. Millais Ophelia (1852) Lizzy Siddal posed in her bath, heated by lamps which went out, chilling the water and giving her a cold. Her father threatened to sue Millais if he didn’t pay for her doctor bills. Siddal married D.G. Rossetti and later committed suicide.

4. William Holman Hunt The Awakening Conscience (1854) The painter said that, she is recalling her home and purer days, “breaking away from her gilded cage with a startled holy resolve, while her shallow companion still sings on, ignorantly intensifying her repentant purpose.” Ruskin commented that the hem of her dress would soon be covered with mud. Many symbols in the painting reflect her position, including the cat and discarded glove.

5. William Frith The Railway Station (1862) There are many small stories within the large painting.

6. Augustus Egg Past and Present (1858) Image 1 of 3 The man holds a letter which tells the story—but so do the details of the painting. Notice how the house of cards has fallen down. Even the paintings on the wall reflect the situation.

7. Egg Image 2 The motherless girls gaze at the moon.

8. Egg Image 3 Same night as image 2— notice the same moon. The mother has a new baby snuggled to her breast.

9. Ford Maddox Brown The Last of England (1855) Brown was his own model. Brown wanted to make the coldness of the picture authentic: “To insure the peculiar look of light all around, which objects have on a dull day at sea, it was painted for the most part in the open air on dull days, and when the flesh was being painted, on cold days. The weather made my hand look blue with the cold as I require it in the work, so I painted all day out in the garden.” Brown wrote a sonnet to go with the painting, “She grips his listless hand and clasps her child,/Through rainbow tears she sees a sunnier gleam,/She cannot see a void where he will be.”

10. Brown Work (1852-68) The painting represents both manual labor and brain workers — Thomas Carlyle and Rev. F. D. Maurice. Brown wrote a sonnet, “Work, which beads the brow and tans the flesh/Of lusty manhood, casting out its devils,/By whose weird art transmuting poor man’s evils/Their bed seems down, their one dish ever fresh.”

11. Dante Gabriel Rossetti Found (1853-82) Note the lamb tied in the cart symbolic of the woman’s situation. Rossetti was never happy about the phallic marker on the right of the man.

12. Rossetti The Blessed Damozel (1875-78) Poem written 1847—the first four stanzas are written on the base of the frame, designed by DGR. Woman in heaven loves man on earth.

13. James Whistler Nocturne in Blue and Gold (Old Battersea Bridge) (1872-77) John Ruskin accused Whistler of “flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face” with his style. Whistler sued Ruskin for libel. He won the case but was only awarded a farthing and was financially ruined.

14. Whistler Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 2 (1872) Portrait of Thomas Carlyle.

15. Aubrey Beardsley How Sir Bedivere Cast the Sword Excalibur into the Water (1894) Arthurian legend.