Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1981.25.650
Gallery Label:
Henry Walton exhibited this painting at the Royal Academy in 1777 as A Market Girl. A wearied girl rests all alone by the wayside, bundled up against the cold and carrying her basket of chickens either to or from market. The public exhibitions helped spread the popularity of small paintings such as this, pictures of everyday life with a moralizing subtext, which were called “fancy pictures.” By the 1770s there was a vogue for fancy pictures of country people, often children, and Walton’s Market Girl achieved popularity when reproduced in mezzotint by John Raphael Smith and retitled The Silver Age. Smith’s new title alluded to the fallen state of humanity and the need for work to sustain life. Here, life’s travails and hardships are seen expressed in the young girl’s pensive face. Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016