I remember the first time I saw it, on an idle Tuesday afternoon at the National Gallery of Victoria when I was killing time between lectures as a uni student with depression and literary pretensions. This, incidentally, is the optimal possible situation to first lay eyes on the Sad Sheep.I was transfixed by the painting and could not have taken another step if I tried. My mind, which moments ago had been a roiling mess of anxiety andlyrics, grew still.
“I dote on museums. The ’s holdings are great … but yeah, the Sad Sheep just stopped me dead in my tracks,” he told me via email.“This has ruined my day,” he wrote, alongside a photo. “And now it has ruined yours.”In an attempt to better understand its appeal, I turned to Dr Ted Gott, senior curator of international art at the NGV. I wanted to understand why, in a gallery crowded with masterworks, this one in particular inspires such a visceral response.
“Victorian society loved to celebrate death,” says Gott. With high infant mortality, disease, and poor sanitation in cities, death was omnipresent. The British Empire took its cues from Queen Victoria, who had been in mourning since Prince Albert’s death in 1861.
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