Augustus Edwin Mulready
English, 1844 – 1904
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Augustus Edwin Mulready was an English genre painter whose work often depicted London street scenes with urchins and flower-sellers.
Mulready came from a family of artists. His grandfather, William Mulready (1786–1863), came to London from Ireland and established himself as a very successful and popular genre painter and book illustrator. His grandmother Elizabeth Mulready, née Varley (1784–1864) was a landscape painter, and the sister of artist John Varley (1778–1842).
Mulready was born in Kensal Green, London, the third of five children of William Mulready Junior (1805–1878, portrait painter and picture restorer), and his wife Sara (1818–1874). He studied art at the South Kensington Schools and as early as 1861, at the age of 17, was already promoting himself as a figure artist. In the same year he entered the Royal Academy, London on the recommendation of John Callcott Horsley who took him under his patronage.
From 1870, Mulready was associated with the Cranbrook Colony of artists, living, from 1871, at Waterloo Place, next door to F D Hardy. He returned to London in 1874. Being much younger than other members of the colony, he had little in common with them, and his art reflected on social issues of the day, particularly on the poverty experienced by children their struggle with adult problems - no over-sentimental rural or domestic scenes by him are known. He often depicted London street scenes with urchins and poor flower-sellers, such as 'A Day's Reckoning' and 'Sounds of Revelry', shown in 1886 at the Hanover Gallery, and 'A Flower Girl in a Red Shawl' and 'A Newspaper Boy Selling Papers' displayed at Walker's Gallery in Liverpool in 1887.