William Powell Frith

William Powell Frith was born in Aldfield, near Ripon in the then West Riding of Yorkshire on 9 January 1819. He had originally intended to be an auctioneer.[5] His mother was Jane Frith, née Powell (1779–1851). Frith was encouraged to take up art by his father, a hotelier in Harrogate. Frith was great uncle and an advisor to the English school portrait painter Henry Keyworth Raine (1872–1932).[6]

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 (in 1859),[7] and Laurence Sterne.

Mr WP Frith RA as portrayed by Spy in Vanity Fair, 10 May 1873. Caption reads "The Derby-Day".

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' (also known as '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.[8] 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,[9] a scene of Paddington station. In 1865 he was chosen to paint the marriage of the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) and Princess Alexandra of Denmark.

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."[10]

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; Private collection), 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.

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.[11]

Frith died in 1909 aged 90 and is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery in London.

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.[14] Frith married Alford a year after the death of Isabelle in 1880.[15] A daughter from his first family, Jane Ellen Panton, published Leaves of a life in 1908. It is a book of childhood reminiscences describing her father and the family's set of artist and literary friendships, chiefly members of The Clique. Walter Frith, the third son from Frith's first marriage, was the author of fourteen plays and three novels.

• 
  Charles Dickens in His Study, 1859
• 
  The Crossing Sweeper, 1858
• 
  The Two Central Figures in "Derby Day", at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1860
• 
  The Little Gleaner, circa 1850
• 
  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, standing in front of the boy wearing green.
• 
  Dolly Varden, 1842. Dolly Varden is 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
• 
  Ramsgate Sands, 1854
• 
  Olivia unveiling, 1874. From Act I, Scene 5 of William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night
• 
  The Railway Station, 1862. Depiction of Paddington railway station.

• My Autobiography and Reminiscences (1887).[16] (BiblioBazaar reprint, 2009: ISBN 1-116-49774-3)
• Further Reminiscences (1888).
• John Leech, His Life and Work, 2 vols. (1891).

Citations

Sources

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

• Bills, Mark (2006). William Powell Frith: Painting the Victorian Age. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-12190-3
• Wood, Christopher (2006). William Powell Frith: A Painter and His World. Sutton Publishing Ltd. ISBN 0-7509-3845-5

Wikimedia Commons has media related to William Powell Frith.

Wikisource has the text of the Dictionary of National Biography 1912 supplement's article about Frith, William Powell.

• Works by William Powell Frith at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about William Powell Frith at Internet Archive
• William Powell Frith at Artcyclopedia (images from various Museums and image galleries)
• Phryne's list of pictures by Frith in accessible collections in the UK at the Wayback Machine (archived May 12, 2008)
• William Powell Frith page at the Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate.
• William Powell Frith chronology at the Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate. Archived here.
• Profile on Royal Academy of Arts Collections
• 95 artworks by or after William Powell Frith at the Art UK site
• La Sacristía del Caminante: ‘Sherry, Sir?’ de William Powell Frith y las Bodegas Williams & Humbert.