Oil painting entitled 'Sickness and Health' by Thomas Webster. Great Britain, 1843.

This painting also originally bore a literary quotation with its title: 'the cheerfulness of innocence serves to mitigate distress' taken from Wordsworth. The sickness and death of children was common throughout the social classes in nineteenth-century England, and was a constant theme in art and literature from the 1830s. A special impetus was given by Dickens, whose death of young Paul in Dombey and Son (1847-8) and of Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop (1841) reached the hearts and minds of most of the reading public. Webster appeals to our emotions by contrasting the two children dancing to the music of the itinerant organ-grinder with the sick girl and her sympathetically morose brother. The picture was much admired by contemporary critics, not only for its sweetness of sentiment but for its careful handling of paint.

Given by John Sheepshanks, 1857

Given by John Sheepshanks, 1857

Webster exhibited this painting alongside a quotation from Wordsworth's poem 'The Three Cottage Girls': 'The cheerfulness of innocence survives to mitigate distress'. He starkly contrasts the girls dancing to organ music with the sick girl and her anxious family. A critic thought it 'a simple subject, treated with infinite grace and pathos'.

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