And when did you last see your father? by William Frederick Yeames

And when did you last see your father? 
Source: Wikimedia Commons

The nineteenth century was a prime time for history painting. Traditionally, history painting—which takes its name from the Latin word historia, meaning story—is simply a narrative style of painting. However, in the nineteenth century, British painters took history painting in a different direction and increasingly used the genre to portray events from their country’s past.

History paintings quickly became popular with the public as well as offering artists a useful vehicle to explore heightened emotion or to convey the artist’s ideas about the lessons offered by the past. William Frederick Yeames was one of the leading history painters of his time; although his work was popular with the public, it received little critical acclaim from other artists.

Yeames had a particular interest in portraying subjects from the Tudor and Stuart periods. His work was not always historically accurate. Instead, Yeames used historical subjects as a means to explore moments of drama where historical events could be interpreted or go in more than one way. These paintings, designed to be intentionally ambiguous, are known as problem pictures.

The best and most famous of Yeames’ problem pictures is And when did you last see your father? The painting depicts an imagined scene from the English Civil War. Here, we see a group of Parliamentarians questioning a Royalist family. A small boy dressed in a blue suit is the focal point of the piece. As the title suggests, he is being asked to account for the whereabouts of his Royalist father. To the left, we can see the boy’s mother and sister; both wait anxiously to hear whether or not he will betray his father.

The boy with his blue suit and blond hair is a symbol of innocence and childhood naivety. And when did you last see your father? is an emotional seesaw, and the boy is at the center of it. On one side is the potential betrayal of the family and on the other is the risk posed by the Parliamentarians. Studying the painting, the viewer has no idea which way the seesaw will tip. The piece captures a single moment in time in which events could go either way.

Though the viewer will never know the end of the story, the potentiality is what makes the piece interesting. It invites the viewer to insert themselves into the scene and become part of the story, wondering what will happen next just as the characters in the painting do. It is this vivid drama that truly makes And when did you last see your father? a monumental piece of history painting.