Eyre Crowe (1824-1910)

Darning Day (1876) (c) Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

Pen and ink sketch version of ‘Darning Day’ by Eyre Crowe, published in Henry Blackburn’s Academy Notes, No. 3, May 1876, p. 18

Medium: oil

Size: 45.2 cm x 112.6 cm (17 x 44 inches)

Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1876

Current owner: Aberdeen Art Gallery (Acc. No. ABDAG003361), bequeathed by Alexander Macdonald, 1901

Pen and ink sketch version by Eyre Crowe published in Henry Blackburn’s Academy Notes, No. 3, May 1876, p. 18

The Times, 29 April 1876:

‘Darning-day – Red Maids’ School, Bristol’ hangs in the second room. The red-clad little maidens, who seem to find their darning so tedious, are too small in scale for the dimensions of the picture, too much of which is taken up with uninteresting architecture.

Daily Telegraph, 29 April 1876

As for Mr. Eyre Crowe, who is to be sincerely felicitated on his newly-acquired and richly-deserved elevation to the Associateship of the Academy, he approves himself as painstaking, conscientious and keenly graphic as ever in two pictures scrupulously evolved, delicately soignés, and full of praiseworthy points; but we infinitely prefer his “Darning Day at the Red Maids’ School, Bristol” to his “Rehearsal”.

Daily News, 6 May 1876:

Mr. Eyre Crowe’s “Darning Day, Red Maids’ School” (146) is bright and vivacious in colour, and the grouping of that long line of small girls is as dexterously varied as the various grouping of figures in a frieze.

Athenaeum, 13 May 1876:

A picture which will charm a greater number of persons than the last [The Rehearsal] exhibits the painter’s English subject, which is a very pretty and novel one: it is styled Darning Day, Red Maids’ School, Bristol (146). A numerous party of girls, in the brilliant red gowns and white aprons which form the peculiar costume of the institution, are seated on a long bench before the wall of their school, in the smoky sunlight which fills the bare playground of the place. This is the day set apart as a sort of ‘holiday’, in order to general darning of blue hose; many a pair is calling aloud for the needle, but the maids do not all rise to the occasion, for some are dozing, many a gossipping girl sits with a stocking neglected, and thread that is motionless; some really work; one is duly intent on an ailing eye; one yawns as if bored out of her life. The brilliancy of the dresses, and the spirit of the design by which each figure tells a little story, are unexceptional features of the picture, which, in the background and foreground, is rather too uncompromisingly faithful, or, perhaps, it is only too literal to be as charming in frank handling and rich colouring as the other and more important parts are. We could desire more brightness and variety of tone and colour in these accessories; but nothing could be better than the drawing and painting of the figures and faces, or more acceptable than the wealth of character in the girls.

The Graphic, 13 May 1876

“Darning-Day, Red Maids’ School, Bristol.” (Eyre Crowe). – The “Red Maids” are too small. A quaint picture, but not by any means so agreeable in its treatment of charity-girls as Mr. Storey’s “Canterbury Bells” last year.

Henry Blackburn’s Academy Notes, No. 3, May 1876:

The little “red maids” of Bristol, in their scarlet cloaks, busy at work near a dark-coloured red brick wall.

Art Journal, August 1876:

EYRE CROWE’S ‘Darning-day, Red Maids’ School, Bristol (146), a row of twenty girls in red dresses and white pinafores seated along the wall of a great room, will be thoroughly appreciated by everybody for the truth and naïveté with which the artist distinguishes the character of one girl from that of another.