Augustus Leopold Egg

Augustus Leopold Egg painted Victorian life as moral drama, with scenes from literature and history and narrative pictures that invite the viewer to read every detail. His best known work, the triptych Past and Present (1858) in Tate Britain, tells the story of a family’s collapse.

He was born in London in 1816, the son of a gunmaker, studied at the Royal Academy Schools and was a member of the group of young painters known as The Clique. He was a friend of Charles Dickens and a supporter of the Pre-Raphaelites. He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1860 and died in Algiers in 1863.

The Travelling Companions (1862), two young women in a railway carriage, is in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. The Opera Mantle shows his skill with fabric and colour.