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Augustus Edwin Mulready (23 February 1844 – Jan-Mar 1904) was an English genre painter, best known for his sentimental London street scenes. His favourite subjects were children, “almost always rosy-cheeked and healthy, their rags clean”, and always with details of the urban scene, particularly posters. The children’s ragged condition is often contrasted with more affluent citizens in the background, symbolically separated by a railing, who are able to enjoy the entertainments advertised on the posters.[1][2][3] Mulready’s target audience was the sentimental Victorian middle class.[4]
The son of Paul Augustus Mulready (1804–1864), himself a painter,[5] Mulready studied at the South Kensington Schools in London. He entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1861, and exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1863 until 1880. By 1870 Mulready was a prominent member of the Kent-based artists’ colony at Cranbrook.[2]
Mulready returned to London in 1874, where he married Marie that year. They had two children: Claude August, born 1876; and Eleanor Julia, born 1878.[6] As the sentimentality of his street scenes became unfashionable later in his career, Mulready turned his attention to portrait painting.[2]
