Book Review: Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain
Abstract
Tim Barringer Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain New Haven:Yale University Press, 2005, hbk £40.00 (ISBN: 0300103808), xii + 380 pp. DOI: 10.1177/0950017006069834 s Reviewed by Tim Strangleman, Working Lives Research Institute, London Metropolitan University In Men at Work Tim Barringer tells the story of the portrayal of labour in art in mid- 19th-century Britain. It examines the identities and meaning attached to manual labour in the first industrial nation. This was a pivotal moment for both employ- ment and the artists who tried to capture it on canvas and other media. What was being reflected was a society in transition, unsure of what to make of industrial cul- ture and the novel social forms thrown up in its wake. Victorian painters, not unlike their contemporaries in other branches of the arts, were torn between celebrating modern forms of industrial work in urban settings while lamenting the passing of traditional occupations rooted in the countryside. The main focus of the book is the portrayal of manual labour usually, but not exclusively, in oil painting and therefore covers important movements such as the Pre-Raphaelites and the understandings of commentators such as Ruskin and Morris. Early on