Engraving of ‘Sir Richard Steele writing to his wife’, by Eyre Crowe (1858). Engraving by J. Cooper, published in the Art Journal, June 1864
Medium: oil
Size: 30 x 22 inches
Exhibited: French Gallery, Pall Mall, 1858
This painting was exhibited at the Winter Exhibition at the Society of British Artists’ Suffolk Street Gallery in Pall Mall. It was auctioned by dealer and engraver Ernest Gambart at Christie’s on 3 May 1861. It is said to have been owned by a collector, Mr Plint of Leeds. It was later in the possession of collector William Cox, who sold it at auction at Foster’s in London on 26 February 1862. An item of the same name featured in the auction of the collection of the late J. Latty Bickley Esq. at Christie’s on 14 February 1863. It was later owned by Mr James Leathart of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a celebrated collector of contemporary art, to whom Crowe had been introduced by William Bell Scott in June 1862. Mr Leathart’s widow was forced to sell the collection after his death in 1895, and the picture was purchased by Mr Ralph Atkinson.
An engraved illustration of ‘Steele and his Children’ was published in The Morning Chronicle on 4 Jan 1859.
The Era, 7 Nov 1858
A domestic incident in the life of Steele, as related by him to his wife in a letter, has been made the subject of a picture, 28, Steele and his Children, in which the artist, Eyre Crowe, if he has not fully realized the descriptive passage, has, nevertheless, succeeded in making a very good picture. The expression on the face of the pleased and gratified father, as he looks up at his youngest girl, who is spilling his ponnce, is uncommonly good, though the features of both daughters want purpose. The boy with the torn breeches on the floor is better, but on the whole the picture seems unfinished, and the accessories of the scene are not sufficiently defined and scarcely in keeping.
National Magazine, vol 5 issue 27, January 1859, p.160:
Steele and His Children by Eyre Crowe
The subject of Mr. Crowe’s picture is completely described in the following letter from Captain Sir Richard Steele, “honest Dick Steele”, as Thackeray calls him, to his second wife, dated Hampton Court, March 16, 1717: – ‘My dear Prue, – *** The brats, my girls, stand on each side of the table, and Molly says that what I am now writing is about her new coat. Bess is with me till she has new clothes. Miss Moll has taken upon her to hold the sand-box, and is so incompetent in her office that I cannot write more. Your son, at the present writing, is mighty well employed in tumbling on the floor of the room, sweeping the sand with a feather. He is also a very great scholar: he can read his primer; and I have brought down my Virgil. He makes very shrewd remarks about the pictures. He begins to be very ragged, and I hope I shall be pardoned if I equip him with new clothes and frocks, or what Mrs. Evans and I shall think for his service.’ The work itself is at present at the Winter Exhibition of pictures and sketches now open in the French Gallery, Pall Mall – an exhibition of much interest.
Eyre Crowe (1824-1910) 