His father Joseph Egg was a wealthy gunsmith from the distinguished gun making family, who immigrated to London from Huningue, Alsace.

Egg sought to combine popularity with moral and social activism, in line with the literary work of his friend Charles Dickens.

[3] With Dickens he set up the "Guild of Literature and Art", a philanthropic organisation intended to provide welfare payments to struggling artists and writers.

[4] Unlike most other members of The Clique, Egg also admired the Pre-Raphaelites; he bought work from the young William Holman Hunt and shared ideas on colour theory with him.

Always in poor health, Egg spent his later years in the warmer climate of continental Europe, where he painted Travelling Companions, an ambiguous image of two near-identical young women that has sometimes been interpreted as an attempt to represent two sides of the same person.

A member of the circle of friends that included Dickens and Wilkie Collins, Egg features in their surviving correspondence.