The Bridge of Sighs
Date1857
Artist
John Everett Millais
(English painter, 1829–1896)
Illustration CitationPassages from the Poems of Thomas Hood, Illustrated by the Junior Etching Club, in Thirty-Four Plates, by Thomas Hood. (London: Gambart, 1858)
MediumEtching
Dimensionsplate: 4 1/2 × 3 1/2 in. (11.4 × 8.9 cm)
sheet: 16 3/4 × 11 in. (42.5 × 27.9 cm)
sheet: 16 3/4 × 11 in. (42.5 × 27.9 cm)
Credit LineAcquisition Fund, 2015
Object number2015-1
On View
Not on viewClassificationsPRINT
Label TextThis etching was made just one year after the Pre-Raphaelite contributions to the infamous Moxon edition of Tennyson’s poems – the single book which changed the path of British illustration. The subject is drawn from a poem of the same title by Thomas Hood, a poet and sometime chronicler of London’s poor. The story related is that of a young woman driven to suicide through poverty and homelessness. Millais depicts the main character contemplating her decision.
