Study for "Country Cousins"

c. 1847–48

Study for "Country Cousins", c. 1847–48. Richard Redgrave (British, 1804–1888). Black, red, and white chalk; sheet: 37.5 x 27 cm (14 3/4 x 10 5/8 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Bequest of Dr. Paul J. Vignos, Jr. 2011.127 This drawing is a study for Richard Redgrave’s oil painting Country Cousins, a modern life subject in which class conflict is played out in a domestic interior. In the painting, a rural family calls upon their wealthy relations and is met with sneering condescension. The youngest figure in the composition, a country boy in profile with downcast eyes, is the subject of this acutely observed drawing, exquisitely rendered in black and red chalk with white highlights. The subject matter of Richard Redgrave's paintings was shaped by his impoverished upbringing, the deaths of his mother and sister, and the burden of responsibility for debt-collecting for his father's precarious manufacturing business.