Eyre Crowe (1824-1910)

Medium: oil

Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1859

‘Few of the Puritans, what degree soever they were of, wore their hair long enough to cover their eares…From this custom of wearing their haires, that name of Roundhead became the scornful terme given to the whole Parliament party.’

National magazine, vol 6, iss 33, July 1859, p.164

The Royal Academy, second notice, page 2 of 3

“Back from Marston Moor”, a cavalier soldier entering his father’s farmyard, wounded, from the fight, by Mr. Henry Wallis (939) is anything but worthy of the painter of “The Dead Labourer” and of “Chatterton”. A Roundhead subject by Mr. Eyre Crowe, jun., showing a country gentleman of that persuasion having his hair cut by a village barber, while he sits, sword across his knees, and a clear-looking laugh in his eye, as though he scorned those who judged by externals, is a capital picture. Very capital indeed are the figures of the lady who sits by, and of a child who, with the prettiest of actions, looks at herself in a mirror, and quaintly traces her own features in its reflection with the point of a chubby finger. “Milton visiting Galileo in Prison” (569), by the above artist, is a capital rendering of an excellent subject

Athenaeum, 21 May 1859:

…His other picture, though dry enough, and very full of the over-padded lay figure, is clever in expression, and worth juicier painting and a richer surface. It is called The Roundhead (921) and represents a new convert having his love-locks cut off, to show his connexion with the austere sect. The barber’s ascetic, saturnine face is admirable, – the victim’s by no means bad; still, altogether, this is rather a hide-bound chip of a picture.

National Magazine, vol 6, iss 33, July 1859, p.164:

A Roundhead subject by Mr. Eyre Crowe, jun., showing a country gentleman of that persuasion having his hair cut by a village barber, while he sits, sword across his knees, and a clear-looking laugh in his eye, as though he scorned those who judged by externals, is a capital picture. Very capital indeed are the figures of the lady who sits by, and of a child who, with the prettiest of actions, looks at herself in a mirror, and quaintly traces her own features in its reflection with the point of a chubby finger. “Milton visiting Galileo in Prison” (569), by the above artist, is a capital rendering of an excellent subject.

Art Journal, June 1864:

A strikingly humorous work, suggested by a passage in the Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson. One of Cromwell’s Ironsides is seated in a barber’s shop, having his head cropped to the recognised pattern; his wife and child accompany him. The subject may not be what is called ‘High Art’, but the treatment must be admitted as ‘Good Art’.