The Outcast (Redgrave painting)

The Outcast is an oil on canvas painting by English artist Richard Redgrave, from 1851. It depicts a family's reaction to a daughter bearing an illegitimate child. It is held at the Royal Academy of Arts, in London.^[1]

The melodramatic moral work depicts a stern patriarch of inflexible puritanical morality casting out a fallen woman and her illegitimate baby – probably his daughter and grandchild – from his "respectable" house. Despite the snow visible on the ground outside, the paterfamilias stands by an open door, gesturing angrily for her to depart. Another young woman – probably another daughter – kneels, begging him to relent, while another weeps behind. The mother of the family comforts a weeping son, while a fourth daughter looks on in confusion. An incriminating letter lies on the floor, and a biblical painting – probably Abraham casting out Hagar and Ishmael, but possibly Christ and the woman taken in adultery – hangs on the wall. The device of the incriminating letter was used to better effect in a similar context by Augustus Egg in his 1858 painting Past and Present, No. 1.^[2]

The painting is ambiguous: it could be meant as a warning to other women to avoid a similar fate, or could be intended to evoke sympathy for the plight of the young mother abandoned by her family.^[3]

It was presented to the Royal Academy of Arts by Redgrave when he was elected to full membership.

• Outcast

• Rachlin, Harvey (2007). Scandals, Vandals and Da Vincis Great Paintings and Their Remarkable Stories. Anova Books. pp. 149–160. ISBN 978-1-86105-878-2.
• Vicinus, Martha (1972). Suffer and be Still Women in the Victorian Age. Methuen. p. 63. ISBN 978-0-416-74340-1.