Tough Customers  1881

Oil on canvas, 76 x 63.5 cm [br]Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza Description: At the time Brown painted Tough Customers, homeless youths, their faces "preternaturally aged, brutalised, and defrauded of all that belongs to childhood" numbered by the tens of thousands in New York City. Some were the product of a rapidly growing urban society...