In 1844 Ford Madox Brown entered a competition to paint an altarpiece of the Ascension for the church of St. James, Bermondsey. The competition was won by a relatively unknown artist John Wood (1801-1877). This is a pen and ink study for one of the groups of angels, on the right, who welcome Christ to heaven. On the verso is a study for two angels in another group. As the drawing style indicates Brown was influenced by work produced by the Fuseli and his circle in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries when producing his competition entry.
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