The Gossiping Blacksmith

The Gossiping Blacksmith
ArtistEdward Penny
Year1769
TypeOil on canvas, genre painting
Dimensions101 cm × 125.7 cm (40 in × 49.5 in)
Location

The Gossiping Blacksmith is a 1769 oil painting by the British artist Edward Penny. It is inspired by a passage from William Shakespeare's play King John. It depicts a scene where a blacksmith is shown gossiping to his neighbours.[1] [2]

Penny was a founder member of the Royal Academy of Arts and he displayed this painting at the inaugural Royal Academy Exhibition of 1769 held in Pall Mall. The picture is now in the collection of the Tate Britain, having been acquired in 1964. [3] The painting was engraved and became a popular print associated with the Radical supporters of John Wilkes.[4] A mezzotint by Richard Houston based on Penny's painting is held by the British Museum.[5]

References

Bibliography

  • McCormack, Helen. William Hunter and His: Eighteenth-Century Cultural Worlds: The Anatomist and the Fine Arts. Taylor & Francis, 2017.
  • Solkin, David H. Painting Out of the Ordinary: Modernity and the Art of Everyday Life in Nineteenth-century Britain. Yale University Press, 2008.
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