Refreshing the Weary is an important example in the British tradition of urban street narratives. Hannah would have witnessed the large daily intake to London of the rural working classes who arrived in search of work and lodgings. The legend of Dick Whittington lived on. In the foreground, two such exhausted children, the boy still in his country smock, find rest on a step beside a smart London town house in a newly developed square, where the sapling trees are coming into leaf. The young boy, his shoes worn out with walking, and comically holding an oversized umbrella, is being refreshed by a goodly local potbearer. Meanwhile, the children’s mother, resting against the locked water pump, watches her elder daughter asking directions of the cook maid of the nearby house, who, as it happens, jug in hand, carries the key to the pump. The water pump is the private property of the grand houses. It is for this reason that the strangers are so thirsty. Delivery boys from the markets of Smithfield and Covent Garden look on. On the servant’s stairs behind them, a charming scene of courtship takes place - a kitchen maid glances towards a baker’s delivery boy; his basket, covered by a cloth to keep the bread fresh, rests by his feet. The scene is also observed by two well-to-do young sisters, carrying a hoop and stick on their way to play in the square. Passing behind them is a boy from the Wenham Lake Ice Company who has just delivered ice to the kitchen, his yoke lightened by the recently emptied buckets. He makes his way back to the green van parked at the front of the house as he munches on a cake that he has received from the cook below. Robert Hannah was born in Kircudbrightshire, Scotland. He studied first in Liverpool, then at the Royal Academy Schools in London: he also visited and studied in Rome. Between 1842 and 1870 he exhibited 22 paintings at the Royal Academy. He numbered William Holman Hunt among his friends, and Charles Dickens was the owner of two of his works.
The Art Union Monthly Journal, The Royal Academy Review, June 1847, page 198: 'A work executed with much nerve, decision, and character, qualities which, it is to be regretted, are, we may say, thrown away upon a subject of vulgar cast. In the foreground are "the weary" a boy and girl, the former benefitting by the offices of the potbearer of some neighbouring public house. In the background, as well as can be seen, are a cookmaid receiving meat and other things from butchers, bakers etc. The scene is closed in by houses like those of the far-famed Belgravia. With such executive power, good colour, and arrangement, it is to be lamented that this artist does not attempt a theme somewhat more aspiring.'