Patient Life of Unrequited Toil

Adopted by Marie-Claire & Peter Wilson

Begun in the Isle of Wight in 1875 and finished in the Surrey countryside, Mary Watts described this work as an illustration of ‘the painter’s compassion for an old servant’. Exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1890, Frederic Leighton, a close friend of the artist, praised the painting for its differentiation from his usual subject matter. However, Watts doubted the finished work, believing that it looked ‘like a bottle of green pickles’.