THE British artist Ford Madox Brown was born in 1821 in Calais. The Madox Brown family moved back and forth between the Continent and Kent several times.
Ford Madox Brown finally settled in London in 1844. The Last of England was completed in 1855. It depicts an imagined scene in which a husband and wife gaze aft from a boat. The coast behind them is Kent, as denoted by the white cliffs. The faces are those of Madox Brown and his second wife, Emma Hill.
The boat on which the couple sail is named the Eldorado. El Dorado is a mythical city of gold situated somewhere in South America.
