The Glen Family of Hull

This extremely naive and unsophisticated painting by a local artist shows the kind of portrait that would have been commissioned by the middle-class patron in a provincial town. The family shown, Henry Glen, his wife and his son William are in their sitting room above The Princes Royal, the pub they ran on Junction Dock (now Princes Dock). Although the figures are very weak, the furnishings have been depicted in great detail and provide an interesting reflection of the taste of the period. Mrs. Overend was a Hull 'artist and photographer.' She would probably have photographed the faces of her sitters and built up the rest of the picture from these. As can be seen, her grasp of anatomy was quite poor. It can be safely assumed that she was an amateur artist, as few women in the nineteenth century made their living from painting. Usually, art was a hobby pursued by middle-class women with time on their hands. A William Mann Overend of Norfolk Street, presumably her husband, is listed in the Hull Directory of 1851 as a 'portrait painter' and, in a marriage certificate of the same year, as 'artist'.