George Bernard O'Neill (1828-1917)

The enforcement of Church Rates (see the bill in the Tax Gatherer's hand), was hotly disputed in the mid-nineteenth-century, with Quakers objecting to making a contribution to the established Church on grounds of conscience. The Compulsory Church Rates Abolition Act was finally passed in 1868. A member of the so-called Cranbrook colony of artists who specialised in painting 'genre' scenes of everyday life, O'Neill chose to depict a lively contemporary topic which would have roused those viewing the picture at the Royal Academy in 1862. For that reason it was included in Graham Reynolds' pioneering study of Painters of the Victorian Scene, and was owned by Robert Frank who did much to revive interest in Victorian Paintings in the 1960s.