JAMES COLLINSON (BRITISH, 1825-1881)

Another version of this composition can be seen at Tate Britain, entitled The Empty Purse, while the version shown at the Royal Academy of 1857 and which was included in Great Victorian Pictures (Arts Council, 1978, no. 5) is now in the Castle Museum, Nottingham. A further version, entitled At the Bazaar is in the Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield. The picture was among Collinson's most popular compositions, and was widely reproduced in his lifetime through engraving.

As with To Let (see lot 67), the oval composition depicts a lady, three-quarter length, whose gaze directly confronts the viewer. To contemporary eyes however, the messages contained within the picture appear ambiguous. The bill to the woman's right advertises a church bazaar whose patroness is the Right Honourable Lady Dorcas. In the New Testament, Dorcas, a Christian exemplar, provided charity and clothing for the poor. Charity bazaars were a much enjoyed pastime amongst the Victorian middle class, whose female members were otherwise barred from commercial activity. The plethora of goods on offer, gaudy and inessential, also attest to an envigorated appetite for shopping. But what are we to make of the pictures various titles - For Sale and The Empty Purse? Does the empty purse signify, as feminist art-historians would have it, the sitter's lack of financial independence, and are we to regard the sitter herself as an item for sale, in a society where marriage was often regarded as a contractual arrangement, undertaken for reasons of finance rather than for love? The keen eyed viewer might have spotted a religious print of Christ bearing the cross inscribed 'follow me', perhaps an injunction to the viewer to leave worldly considerations behind, and follow a virtuous path. Collinson does not appear to have recorded his reminiscences in which to explain the picture.