Saved by the hand that is not stretched out: The aged poor in hubert von herkomer's eventide: A scene in the westminster union

Focusing on the work of the Victorian “old age painter,” Hubert von Herkomer, this article explores how, through the production of “truth” effects, ostensibly harmless visual representations can function to propagate and reinforce ageist attitudes. Because it depicts the old seamstresses who are its subject as redeemed by the work they perform, Herkomer's painting is proved complicit with an ideology of labor which dooms its subjects to the conditions of squalor deemed necessary to the workhouse environment.