The Rattle (study)

Mulready's study for The Rattle (1807) is an early work showing this Irish-born painter beginning to develop the genre subjects that would make him one of the most celebrated painters of Victorian England. Mulready arrived in London as a young man and trained at the Royal Academy Schools, where he absorbed the tradition of domestic genre painting going back to Hogarth and forward through the English school's fascination with everyday life and character. A child playing with a rattle — a subject of disarming simplicity — gave him the opportunity to study the interaction between a young figure and an object, the beginnings of his lifelong interest in the emotional dynamics of domestic life. The study's careful observation anticipates the meticulous naturalism of his mature work.

The small study shows careful observation of domestic detail with warm, controlled tones. Mulready's precise brushwork and attention to texture are already evident in this early preparatory work.