Hurdy Gurdy Boy

This 1843 Hurdy Gurdy Boy depicts a street musician, a popular genre subject in Victorian painting that documented the lives of London's working poor. Painted when Millais was fourteen, the work demonstrates his developing ability to combine social observation with artistic accomplishment. As the most technically gifted of the Pre-Raphaelites, Millais executed this work with the meticulous brushwork and brilliant color that defined the Brotherhood's challenge to the academic tradition of his day

The street musician is rendered with the careful observation of physiognomy and costume that would later characterize Millais's Pre-Raphaelite work, though here applied within more conventional Victorian genre painting traditions.