The First Born, 1913
This immensely popular painting attracts numerous enquiries from people all over Britain. The 'first born' of the picture was one week old Muriel Thompson (now Holtby), the daughter of a Beverley police constable. The mother was a Mrs Utteridge and the figure of the father a Mr Constable, who tragically died before Elwell had painted the father's loving gaze. He frequently used local people as models to suggest an ideal or type; here, in a romanticised picture of married life, the 'ideal' mother, doting father and 'perfect' baby. Elwell studied art in Antwerp and Paris. Amongst his contemporaries were the many British artists who were at that time exploring their own reactions to French art, such as those of the Newlyn School. The warm, dappled light that illuminates 'The First Born' reveals Elwell's own brand of English Impressionism. Overall, however, his realistic, technically skilled style remained constant throughout his career, during which he exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy. In many ways his works continue the kind of realism combined with idealisation that is typical of late Victorian narrative genre painting.
