Felix Stone Moscheles (1833–1917) – Our Slaves – Monumental Victorian Social Oi

A monumental and powerful oil on canvas by Felix Stone Moscheles (1833–1917), entitled Our Slaves.

Beyond its considerable artistic presence, the painting is an important piece of social history, documenting and challenging the exploitation of some of the poorest workers in late-Victorian society. The painting depicts a procession of Victorian sandwich-board men, their placards advertising the fictional “19th Century Theatre – Our Slaves”, while behind them Moscheles has painted prosperous shopfronts bearing deliberately satirical inscriptions, including the wonderfully biting “SWEAT ’EM … AND PROSPER.” Far more than a London street scene, the painting appears to be a commentary on the exploitation of the Victorian working poor, effectively modern-day slavery, a subject particularly relevant to Moscheles, whose work and later life became increasingly concerned with social reform, pacifism and human rights.

The subject has a fascinating parallel in Moscheles’ later social-reform painting Sweated, exhibited in 1908, which drew upon evidence presented to the House of Lords Select Committee on the Sweating System. It highlighted the plight of poorly paid workers, including women sewing garments for up to 15 hours a day for a pittance. The sandwich-board men depicted here occupied a similarly precarious world of casual labour, walking the streets for long hours carrying advertisements for meagre wages. Our Slaves appears to make Moscheles’ message explicit: beneath the prosperity of Victorian society lay an exploited workforce, hence the wonderfully cynical “SWEAT ’EM … AND PROSPER.”

Moscheles was the son of the celebrated pianist and composer Ignaz Moscheles and was named after his godfather, the composer Felix Mendelssohn, who had been his father’s pupil. An accomplished painter who exhibited in London, Paris and Antwerp, Moscheles later became President of the International Arbitration and Peace Association and was repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work within the international peace movement. A remarkable, beautifully painted and unusually confrontational Victorian work, made all the more impressive by its monumental scale.

Signed lower left. Oil on canvas. Visible canvas: 130 × 99 cm. Approximately 5 ft 2 in high framed. Old address label for the artist at 80 Elm Park Road, Chelsea, London. We believe the artist lived here from roughly 1890-94 before literally moving to the end of the road to Old Church Street.