London Nomades
1877
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1877
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
London Nomades is a 1877 by John Thomson, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a family sitting outside a wooden wagon in a grassy field near London. Kids play, a woman sews, and a man smokes a pipe—all in soft, natural light. These weren’t gypsies but working-class Londoners who lived on the move, selling goods or taking seasonal jobs. Thomson photographed them first, then turned the photos into paintings. It’s rare to see poor city people shown with this much care in 1877. To see more quiet scenes of 19th-century England, look up *england, 19th century*.
“In London there are a number of what may be termed, owing to their wandering, unsettled habits, nomadic tribes,” wrote John Thomson’s collaborator, reporter Adolphe Smith. Living in wagons, they moved around the city, working seasonal jobs or selling cheap wares at fairs and markets or door to door.
This wagon was owned by William Hampton, “a man of fair intelligence and good natural ability” who was, however, illiterate and had a “dread of education.”
Read the full account in the museum source.
John Thomson painted Scottish landscapes in oil, focusing on the rugged terrain around the Trossachs and Selkirkshire.
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