Studies of Italian Organ Boys and Their Monkeys

Italian organ-grinders and their performing monkeys were a familiar presence on London streets in the first decades of the nineteenth century, and Mulready's studies of these figures reflect his career-long interest in street life and the appearance of social difference within the English capital. These studies likely served as preparatory material for a finished genre painting or were valued as independent observations of urban social types. The organ boys — typically children from poor Italian immigrant families — occupied an ambiguous social position that would have interested a painter of Mulready's sociological acuity, and the performing monkeys added exotic and comic dimensions to the urban scene.

Mulready's figure studies are characterized by a careful attention to pose and gesture that derives from academic life drawing practice, here applied to the informal postures of street performers and their trained animals. His chalk or pencil technique captures costume, movement, and character with economical precision.