Art

Thomas Benjamin Kennington


Thomas Benjamin Kennington was an English genre, social realist and portrait painter.  He was a founder member and first secretary of the New English Art Club (from 1886), and also founded the Imperial Arts League.

Kennington became known not only for his idealised paintings of domestic and everyday-life scenes but also for his social realist works. Paintings such as "Orphans" (1885), "Widowed and fatherless" (1885), "Homeless" (1890), and "The pinch of poverty" (1891), depicted the harsh realities of life for the poor in Britain in a manner that played on the onlooker's emotions.

He painted in both oils and watercolour.

"Orphans" (1885)

"Widowed and fatherless" (1885)

"The pinch of poverty" (1891)

"Homeless" (1890)

Homeless, 1890, is one of a series of works in which Kennington depicts the plight of women and children who were impoverished or destitute. In Homeless, the square-brush technique used by Kennington in painting the wet pavement and the river, and his focus on subtle tonal variations rather than on colour - as in the soft grey light illuminating this scene - were among the characteristics adapted by British artists from French sources at the time.