This is a very touching and respectful painting entitled "Welsh Peasants Reading the Franchise Bill". The artist was Jenny Bond and the date was 1884. It will have surprised many who saw it, around the time it was painted, since the idea that Welsh peasants could read must have been surprising to say the least. But many of them could read, thanks to the chapels, the Sunday schools and the circulating schools -- and many were quite aware of what was going on in the world. And many small farmers and labourers were members of the nonconformist chapels too -- where they read the scriptures and even became involved in matters of theological interpretation as deacons and congregation members.
Actually the building in this painting is not a peasant's hovel -- it is a substantial stone interior with beams, reasonable furniture and a simnai fawr. I would say that this is a typical kitchen of a tenant farmer who maybe had his own animals and who aspired to greater things. Just like some of Martha's tenants in the Angel Mountain saga.
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