The Museum of London has just purchased two iconic Victorian paintings supported by generous grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund and the National Art Collections Fund.

Eastward Ho! August 1857 by Henry Nelson O’Neil depicts soldiers boarding a ship at Tilbury, leaving to fight in the Indian ‘Mutiny’ - the first Indian war of Independence in 1857. Its companion painting Home Again, 1858 shows the soldiers’ return a year later.

The Mutiny was seen as a shocking challenge to British supremacy in India and generated much emotive and patriotic coverage in the press and in works of art. O’Neil’s paintings focus on the impact of war at home. In Eastward Ho! women bid emotional farewells to fathers, husbands, brothers and sons. The same characters reappear in Home Again but not every story ends happily. The paintings caught the public mood and created a sensation when they were exhibited at the Royal Academy in London and on a tour of Britain where they were seen by over half a million people. They came to symbolise the effect on ordinary people in Britain of the many wars being fought overseas in the name of the Empire.

Henry Nelson O’Neil (1817 – 1880) was a leading historical genre painter who painted in a highly detailed realist style. He was a member of a group of London artists called ‘The Clique’, which included Richard Dadd, Augustus Egg and William Powell Frith.

The paintings will be on display at the Museum of London.

For further information see our press release .

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