Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1978.43.6
Gallery Label:
Augustus Egg worked on this pair of moralizing pictures for two years, and they reflect the growing influence of the closely observed and accurate depictions of nature found in work by members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Egg presents the decadent life of George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham and friend of King Charles II. In the first picture, Buckingham is the toast of the court as Charles II raises a glass to him at a table crowded with admirers. In the second, Buckingham dies alone in a squalid inn in a scene adapted from the poet Alexander Pope's famous description of his death "in the worst inn's worst room." Although Egg intended his paintings to reinforce Victorian values, his meticulous and seductive representation of Buckingham’s dissolute life in the first painting provoked offense. In 1865, the Art Journal followed the disapproving example set by Queen Victoria in describing this painting as "repulsive.” Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016