Object Image

Song of the Shirt

This is one of just four paintings which Watts produced around 1850 and which deal directly with contemporary social problems. In the early Victorian period, needlework was one of the few ways that a woman could earn money respectably. But exploitative employers set piecework rates so low that woman workers, despite long hours, faced the choice between starvation and prostitution.

Government research and crusading journalism drew attention to their situation. So did Thomas Hood’s popular poem, the Song of the Shirt. Watts supported the protests with this major painting of a haggard and exhausted needlewoman....

1850
oil on canvas
144.8 x 127.0cm
COMWG.128

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