British-born member of the Royal Academy, he was a portraitist,
landscape and figure painter. Once interested in realism, he was one of the
founders of the New English Art Club.
However, Hacker changed his style several times. After the plein air work
of the early 1880s, he added a French academic style in the late 1880s, and
then a variety of Pre-Raphaelite, symbolist, poetic-rustic and simple genre
figures. After the turn of the century, he turned to atmospheric studies of
London. He finally settled as a portraitist. His paintings are held in Manchester,
Liverpool, Bradford, Leeds, Rochdale and the Tate.
This painting was conserved in 2001 with the aid of a grant from North West
Museums Service.
Many
people fear the process of ageing, and imagine only pain, illness and the loss
of youthful looks. Plastic surgery is being used to mask ageing, and new medical
advances promise to help us live much longer. Is this sustainable?
If there are less people working and more pensioners to care for, how will we
afford it and how will this affect the way we order society?
Most societies honour older people for their knowledge and the skills they pass
down. Here, the old woman is teaching her grandchild how to recycle old socks.
Arthur
Hacker Mrs says, "I will make a seamstress of you yet." I wouldn't
bet on it Mrs. Mrs says, "it's just a difficulty, just a little difficulty,"
she's referring to my lack of skill in threading a needle, she says, "it
will come in time."
Oh no it won't Mrs. It's not the kind of knowledge or skill I intend to acquire.
I've seen what it means, this seamstress's life and it's bad for your health,
and I really don't see how it could be good for your soul. It's early to rise,
a pitiful excuse for a breakfast, and then it's stitching, stitching, stitching,
all day long, and every minute takes at the very least an hour to pass; stitching,
stitching, stitching, stitching, stitching, stitching, what a terrible waste
of time, and not the least bit of fun, unless you count the play of shadows
on these miserable cold walls, which I don't.
And never anything lovely to stitch, only miserable old things much like the
Mrs herself, and all for hardly any money at all. Stitching, stitching, stitching.
Mrs is very fond of telling me how things are so much better now than they were
in her day, her day! when dinosaurs roamed the earth! In her day Mrs says, her
wages were less than seven shillings a week, her bed was made of straw, and
she had only rags to wear and crusts of bread to eat, if she was lucky! So I
should think myself lucky. Stitching, stitching, stitching!
On Sundays we go to church, the highlight of the week, I don't much care for
all the sermonising but at least I get to look at people other than the Mrs,
and I like the singing of course; last Sunday we sang 'All Things Bright and
Beautiful.'
There's precious little inclusion of anything bright and beautiful in Mrs's
life, unless you count the tears she cries by candlelight when she thinks that
I'm asleep, which I do.
When I first came to Mrs I thought her so old and miserable, even the very thought
of her scared me. I'm not scared of her now, she's not so bad, but she's not
one for smiling much; nor for laughing, nor for singing.
I know I'll be old myself one day, but not for ever such a long time, and when
I am, well then, I'll be the old biddy who's always smiling and laughing and
singing, and I'll probably be a terrible one for the drink.
Stitching, stitching, stitching. Ooooh, but my fingers are aching something
terrible, Mrs says, 'you think your fingers ache do you? well in my day the
needles I had to use were so old that they would constantly break, and my fingers
not only ached, they bled!'
But my fingers do ache Mrs! And so do my eyes, and so does my head, and so does
my weary, weary heart! Mrs thinks a weary heart is only another difficulty that
I will no doubt get used to in time. A stitch in time.
Mrs says she'll make a seamstress of me in time, Mrs thinks that will be a good
thing for me, She's insane, I'm going on the stage, Mrs.
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