The strong diagonal and compressed space of this design adds to the feeling of oppressive summer heat in which Brown sets the miracle of Elijah bringing a child back to life.

'And it came to pass after these things, that the son of the mistress of the house, fell sick; and his sickness was so sore, that there was no breath left in him.
And she said unto Elijah, What have I to do with thee, O thou man of God? Art thou come unto me to call my sin to remembrance, and to slay my son?
And he said unto her, Give me thy son. And he took him out of her bosom, and carried him up into a loft, where he abode, and laid him upon his own bed.
And he stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried unto the Lord, and said, O Lord my God, I pray thee, let this child's soul come into him again.
And the Lord heard the voice of Elijah; and the soul of the child came into him again, and he revived.
And Elijah took the child, and brought him down out of the chamber into the house, and delivered him unto his mother: and Elijah said, See thy son liveth.
And the woman said to Elijah, Now by this I know that thou art a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in thy mouth is truth' (I Kings XV11, 17-24)

He depicts the moment when Elijah emerges with the revived child, who 'is represented as in his grave-clothes, which have a far-off resemblance to Egyptian funeral trappings; having been laid out with flowers in the palms of his hands, as is done by women in such cases.' To him such details were vital to the viewer's understanding of the illustration and he explained in his solo exhibition catalogue that, 'without this, the subject (the coming to life) could not be expressed by the painter's art, and till this view of the subject presented itself to me I could not see my way to make a picture of it' (Ford Madox Brown, 'The Exhibition of Work and other Paintings,' 1865, p. 15)

Such attention to detail and desire for historical accuracy indicate that Brown approached religious compositions in the same fastidious way as his history paintings. The costumes were based on his 'study of Egyptian combined with Assyrian, and other nearly contemporary remains' and his research into middle eastern customs prompted his use of the of a bird's shadow to signify 'the return of the body to the soul.'

Brown worked up three versions of 'Elijah and the Widow's Son' into paintings. The dealer Gambart bought a small watercolour version, which he later sold to Frederick Leyland (present owner unknown), and Frederick Craven of Manchester, a watercolour collector, commissioned a larger version in 1868 (V&A). The painting in the Birmingham collection (1912P23) is the only one in oil and was commissioned by a Brighton wine merchant, James Trist, for 100gns. Trist was so pleased with it that he later sent Brown a case of wine.
LM