Royal Academy Exhibition of 1858

Last updated
The Derby Day by William Powell Frith William Powell Frith - The Derby Day - Google Art Project.jpg
The Derby Day by William Powell Frith

The Royal Academy Exhibition of 1858 was the ninetieth annual Summer Exhibition of the British Royal Academy of Arts. It was held at the National Gallery in London from 3 May to 24 July 1858 during the Victorian era. [1]

Contents

George Frederic Watts submitted three portrait paintings under the pseudonym F.W. George, his first appearance at the Academy in several years after boycotting it. Several of the key participants of the Pre-Raphaelite movement were absent, but the critic John Ruskin suggested that their style had influenced many of the paintings on display. Francis Grant displayed The Countess of Errol at The Camp of the Rifle Brigade, Bulgaria. [2]

Edward Matthew Ward displayed Queen Victoria at the Tomb of Napoleon, a royal commission, depicting the state visit Queen Victoria had made to France in 1855. [3] By far the greatest attraction at the exhibition was William Powell Frith's The Derby Day , a panoramic genre painting featuring the Epson Derby. Its enormous popularity with crowds meant a rail to be erected to protect it. [4] Frith's friend Augustus Egg displayed his Past and Present series, a trilogy of paintings showing the disastrous effect of a family of the wife's adultery.

References

Bibliography