William Powell Frith

Pope Makes Love To Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

William Powell Frith RA (19 January 1819 – 9 November 1909) was an English painter[1] specialising in genre subjects and panoramic narrative works of life in the Victorian era. He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1853, presenting The Sleeping Model as his Diploma work.[2][3] He has been described as the "greatest British painter of the social scene since Hogarth".[4]

Life and career

Born in Aldfield, North Yorkshire, Frith was encouraged to take up art by his father, a hotelier in Harrogate. He moved to London in 1835 where he began his formal art studies at Sass's Academy in Charlotte Street, before attending the Royal Academy Schools. Frith started his career as a portrait painter and first exhibited at the British Institution in 1838. In the 1840s he often based works on the literary output of writers such as Charles Dickens, whose portrait he painted, and Laurence Sterne.

He was a member of The Clique, which also included Richard Dadd. The principal influence on his work was the hugely popular domestic subjects painted by Sir David Wilkie. Wilkie's famous painting The Chelsea Pensioners was a spur to the creation of Frith's own most famous compositions. Following the precedent of Wilkie, but also imitating the work of his friend Dickens, Frith created complex multi-figure compositions depicting the full range of the Victorian class system, meeting and interacting in public places. In Ramsgate Sands, Life at the Seaside (1854) he depicted visitors and entertainers at the seaside resort. He followed this with The Derby Day, depicting scenes among the crowd at the race at Epsom Downs, which was based on photographic studies by Robert Howlett. This 1858 composition was bought by Jacob Bell for £1,500. It was so popular that it had to be protected by a specially installed rail when shown at the Royal Academy of Arts. Another well-known painting was The Railway Station,[5] a scene of Paddington station. In 1865 he was chosen to paint the Marriage of the Prince of Wales.

Pope Makes Love To Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1852)

His 1858 painting The Crossing Sweeper has been described as breaking "new ground in its description of the collision of wealth and poverty on a London street."[6]

Later in his career he painted two series of five pictures each, telling moral stories in the manner of William Hogarth. These were the Road to Ruin (1878), about the dangers of gambling, and the Race for Wealth (1880) about reckless financial speculation. He retired from the Royal Academy in 1890 but continued to exhibit until 1902.

Frith was a traditionalist who made known his aversion to modern-art developments in a couple of autobiographies – My Autobiography and Reminiscences (1887) and Further Reminiscences (1888) – and other writings. He was also an inveterate enemy of the Pre-Raphaelites and of the Aesthetic Movement, which he satirised in his painting A Private View at the Royal Academy (1883), in which Oscar Wilde is depicted discoursing on art while Frith's friends look on disapprovingly. Fellow traditionalist Frederic Leighton is featured in the painting, which also portrays painter John Everett Millais and novelist Anthony Trollope.

Frith was married twice. He had twelve children with his first wife, Isabelle, whilst a mile down the road maintaining a mistress (Mary Alford, formerly his ward) and seven more children – all a marked contrast to the upright family scenes depicted in paintings like Many Happy Returns of the Day. Frith married Alford on the death of Isabelle in 1880.[7] In his later years he painted many copies of his famous paintings, as well as more sexually uninhibited works, such as the nude After the Bath. A well-known raconteur, his writings, most notably his chatty autobiography, were very popular.

In 1856 Frith was photographed at "The Photographed Institute" by Robert Howlett, as part of a series of portraits of "fine artists". The picture was among a group exhibited at the Art Treasures Exhibition in Manchester in 1857.[8]

Frith was great uncle and an advisor to the English school portrait painter Henry Keyworth Raine (1872–1932).[9]

Frith is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery in London.London

The first major retrospective in Frith's native Britain for half a century was staged at the Guildhall Art Gallery, London in November 2006. It transferred to Mercer Art Gallery in Harrogate, North Yorkshire in March 2007. Frith's study for his last major work, The Private View, 1881, is in the Mercer Art Gallery. Frith has paintings in the collection of several British institutions including Derby Art Gallery, Sheffield, Harrogate and the Victoria and Albert Museum.[10]

Selected works

Charles Dickens by Frith

The Crossing Sweeper, 1858

The Little Gleaner

A Private View at the Royal Academy, 1881, 1883, one of Frith's "panoramas", depicting the art-world of his day at a private view, and satirising the influence of Oscar Wilde and the Aesthetic movement. Wilde is the main figure at the right, behind the boy wearing green.

Dolly Varden, 1842. Dolly Varden was a character from Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens.

At my Window, Boulogne

The Beautiful Grisette, 1853. A scene from Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy

Olivia unveiling, 1874

Writings

My Autobiography and Reminiscences (1887). (BiblioBazaar reprint, 2009: ISBN 1-116-49774-3)
Further Reminiscences (1888).
John Leech, His Life and Work, 2 vols. (1891).

References and sources

References

"FRITH, William Powell". Who's Who. Vol. 59. 1907. p. 643.
"Royal Academy of Arts Collections".
Wilman, George (1882), "William Powell Frith, R.A.", Sketches of living celebrities, London: Griffith and Farran, pp. 129–134
William Powell Frith: Painting the Victorian Age. Harrogate Borough Council, 2011. Retrieved 19 April 2013.
"In the collection of Royal Holloway, London University". Retrieved 24 October 2014.
Bills, Mark. "William Powell Frith's 'The Crossing Sweeper': An Archetypal Image of Mid-Nineteenth Century London (2004-05)". The Burlington Magazine. p. 300.
Wainwright, Martin (26 March 2007). "Where's Mary? Hunt is on for Victorian artist's secret mistress". Guardian. London. Retrieved 2007-03-26.
"Oxford Dictionary of Biography, Link to entry for Robert Howlett". Oxforddnb.com. Retrieved 2012-08-22.
"The Minneapolis journal. (Minneapolis, Minn.) 1888-1939, May 13, 1906, Part II, Editorial Section, Image 20". 13 May 1906. p. 8 – via chroniclingamerica.loc.gov.

William Powell Frith, BBC, accessed August 2011

Sources

Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Frith, William Powell". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.