18th Century Brooms

Last updated: Jan 5, 2024

This page focuses on depictions of 18th century brooms, generally in domestic contexts. (A page on 18th century mops is also available on this site, as well as a page on brooms from the 14th-17th centuries.)

• Recueil des modes de la cour de France: la Crieuse de balets
• Brooms, c. 1690-1710
• Het Menselyk Bedryf: The Broom Maker by Jan & Caspar Luyken, 1694
• The Cryes of the City of London Drawne after the Life: Old Shooes for Some Broomes
• Broom with a twisted handle, c. 1700
• Woman sweeping the floor of a house by Jan Luyken, 1711
• De rarekiek by Willem van Mieris, 1718
• Maid from Koblenz, broom in hand by Bernard Picart, 1728
• Woman sweeping a tiled floor and a broom-seller by Edme Bouchardon, c. 1730s
• Street vendor with brooms (Cries of Paris: Balais Balais), 1736
• The Distrest Poet by William Hogarth, 1740
• The Scissors-Grinder by Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich, 1741
• The Spinner by Willem van Mieris
• A man sweeping with a broom by Paul Sandby
• Four studies of a man with a broom by Paul Sandby
• A Nurſe for the Heſſ—ns, 1756
• Any brooms to sweep your Rooms, c. 1759
• The Press Gang by John Collet
• The Kitchen by Willem Joseph Laquy, c. 1760-1771
• Beszem, Beszem, Kuperi Beszem, Cries of Danzig, c. 1765
• A maid pouring soup by Pehr Hilleström, 1770s
• Woman with a mortar and pestle by Pehr Hilleström
• Timothy Lustring the Spouter waked out of his Reverie, 1772
• Le lever de Fanchon by Nicolas-Bernard Lépicié, 1773
• Maid with a broom by Pehr Hilleström, 1774
• Cobler’s Hall, 1775
• The chambermaid, c. 1775-1800
• Betty the Cook Maids Head Drest, 1776
• The Unfortunate Discovery, 1777
• The public writer, c. 1780
• The Housemaid by Thomas Gainsborough, c. 1782-1786
• Mr F–x moving all his Plate & Furniture from St. James’s Place to Wimbledon, 1783
• The Country Tooth-Drawer, 1784
• Mars and Venus, or Sir Cecil chastised, 1784
• The Westminster Deserter drum’d out of the Regiment, 1784
• The Patient’s Paroxysm; or, the Doctor Outwitted, 1784
• Rustic Courtship, 1785
• Recruit Deserted, 1790s-1800s
• Mrs Jane Ebrell, former housemaid and spider-brusher, aged 87 by John Walters, 1793
• The Black Stool by David Allan, 1795
• Diligence and Dissipation: The Modest Girl and the Wanton Fellow Servants in a Gentleman’s House, 1796
• A cottager making lace, 1798
• Abel Wood, 1799
• Morning by Francis Wheatley, 1799
• The drunkard by Thomas Rowlandson
• A large splint broom, made in America in the late 18th or early 19th century