| The Railway Station | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | William Powell Frith |
| Year | 1862 |
| Type | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 54.1 cm× 114 cm(21.3 in× 45 in) |
| Location | Royal Holloway College, London |
The Railway Station is an 1862 genre painting by the British artist William Powell Frith. [1] The painting is held at Royal Holloway College, with a smaller version in the Royal Collection. [2]
It depicts a scene at the busy Paddington Station railway terminus of the Great Western in London. Frith had developed a reputation for producing crowd scenes of everyday life, including Ramsgate Sands (1854) and The Derby Day (1858). Frith himself was doubtful about the potential work noting "I don't think the station at Paddington could be called picturesque, nor can the clothes of the ordinary traveller be said to offer much attraction to the painter", but was persuaded by his art dealer Louis Flatow who offered him reportedly the largest commission fee ever offered to an artist. [3]
The panorama represents all social classes of Victorian society, using the still relatively new railway system. On the right, two detectives are arresting a man as attempts to board a train. [4]
Paddington is an area in the City of Westminster, in central London, England. A medieval parish then a metropolitan borough of the County of London, it was integrated with Westminster and Greater London in 1965. Paddington station, designed by the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel opened in 1847. It is also the site of St Mary's Hospital and the former Paddington Green Police Station.
Paddington, also known as London Paddington, is a London railway station and London Underground station complex, located on Praed Street in the Paddington area. The site has been the London terminus of services provided by the Great Western Railway and its successors since 1838. Much of the main line station dates from 1854 and was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. As of the 2022–23 Office of Rail & Road Statistics, it is the second busiest station in the United Kingdom, after London Liverpool Street, with 59.2 million entries and exits.
William Powell Frith was an English painter 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. He has been described as the "greatest British painter of the social scene since Hogarth".
The Art of the United Kingdom refers to all forms of visual art in or associated with the United Kingdom since the formation of the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707 and encompasses English art, Scottish art, Welsh art and Irish art, and forms part of Western art history. During the 18th century, Britain began to reclaim the leading place England had previously played in European art during the Middle Ages, being especially strong in portraiture and landscape art.
The Clique was a group of English artists formed by Richard Dadd in the late 1830s. Other members were Augustus Egg, Alfred Elmore, William Powell Frith, Henry Nelson O'Neil, John Phillip and Edward Matthew Ward.
Henry Nelson O'Neil was a historical genre painter and minor Victorian writer. He worked primarily with historical and literary subjects, but his best-known paintings dealt with the Indian Mutiny. Eastward, Ho!, dated August 1857 but exhibited the following year, depicts the British troops embarking for India. A second painting, Home Again (1859), shows the troops returning to England. He also had popular successes with romantic scenes portraying the deaths of Mozart and Raphael, depicted as though mentally transported to heaven by their own religious art. In The Last Moments of Mozart the dying composer listens to singers performing part of his Requiem. The Last Moments of Raphael shows the painter contemplating the unseen figure of Christ in his Transfiguration.
John Phillip was a Victorian era Scottish painter best known for his portrayals of Spanish life. He started painting these studies after a trip to Spain in 1851. He was nicknamed John 'Spanish' Phillip.
George Elgar Hicks was an English painter during the Victorian era. He is best known for his large genre paintings, which emulate William Powell Frith in style, but was also a society portraitist.
A Private View at the Royal Academy, 1881 is a painting by the English artist William Powell Frith exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1883. It depicts a group of distinguished Victorians visiting the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1881, just after the death of the Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, whose portrait by John Everett Millais was included on a screen at the special request of Queen Victoria. The room is Gallery III, the largest and most imposing room at Burlington House.
William Maw Egley was an English artist of the Victorian era. The son of the miniaturist William Egley, he studied under his father. His early works were illustrations of literary subjects typical of the period, such as Prospero and Miranda from The Tempest. These were similar to the work of The Clique. William Powell Frith, one of The Clique, hired Egley to add backgrounds to his own work. Egley soon developed a style influenced by Frith, including domestic and childhood subjects. Most of his paintings were humorous or "feelgood" genre scenes of urban and rural life, depicting such subjects as harvest festivals and contemporary fashions. His best-known painting, Omnibus Life in London, is a comic scene of people squashed together in the busy, cramped public transport of the era.
The Crossing Sweeper is an 1858 painting by the English painter William Powell Frith which has been described as breaking "new ground in its description of the collision of wealth and poverty on a London street." Frith later painted several versions of the same subject, updating the fashions.
The Derby Day is a large oil painting showing a panoramic view of The Derby, painted by the English artist William Powell Frith over 15 months from 1856 to 1858. It has been described by Christie's as Frith's "undisputed masterpiece" and also "arguably the definitive example of Victorian modern-life genre."
Ramsgate Sands, also known as Life at the Seaside, is an oil-on-canvas painting by the English artist William Powell Frith, who worked on it from 1851 to 1854. The painting, which depicts a beach scene in Ramsgate, was Frith's first great commercial success: it was exhibited at the Royal Academy summer exhibition in 1854, and bought by Queen Victoria. Frith made a series of similar pictures, showing groups of people in contemporary scenes, including The Derby Day of 1858, The Railway Station of 1862, and Private View at the Royal Academy of 1883.
Victorian painting refers to the distinctive styles of painting in the United Kingdom during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901). Victoria's early reign was characterised by rapid industrial development and social and political change, which made the United Kingdom one of the most powerful and advanced nations in the world. Painting in the early years of her reign was dominated by the Royal Academy of Arts and by the theories of its first president, Joshua Reynolds. Reynolds and the academy were strongly influenced by the Italian Renaissance painter Raphael, and believed that it was the role of an artist to make the subject of their work appear as noble and idealised as possible. This had proved a successful approach for artists in the pre-industrial period, where the main subjects of artistic commissions were portraits of the nobility and military and historical scenes. By the time of Victoria's accession to the throne, this approach was coming to be seen as stale and outdated. The rise of the wealthy middle class had changed the art market, and a generation who had grown up in an industrial age believed in the importance of accuracy and attention to detail, and that the role of art was to reflect the world, not to idealise it.
Charles Dickens in His Study is an oil on canvas painting by English artist William Powell Frith, created in 1859. The painting is signed and dated at the lower left, 'W P Frith fecit 1859'. It is held at the Victoria and Albert Museum, in London.
The Marriage of the Prince of Wales is a painting by the British artist William Powell Frith, created in 1863-1865. It is held in the Royal Collection in London and as of July 2024 hangs in the Principal Corridor at Buckingham Palace.
Eastward Ho! is an 1858 genre painting by the British artist Henry Nelson O'Neil. It depicts troops departing to combat the Indian Mutiny embarking from Gravesend while their families bid them farewell. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition in 1858. In 1859 it was displayed at Grundy's Repository in Liverpool. Today it is part of the collection of the Museum of London.
The South Sea Bubble, a Scene in 'Change Alley in 1720 is an 1847 history painting by the British artist Edward Matthew Ward. It depicts a scene in Exchange Alley in the City of London when the South Sea Bubble was at its height in 1720 shortly before its dramatic collapse. It was a centre of financial speculation and Ward depicts it in a Hogarthian manner.
An English Merrymaking a Hundred Years Ago is an 1847 genre painting by the British artist William Powell Frith. During the early stages of his career Frith was a member of The Clique artistic group. He later became known for his panoramic crowd scenes The Derby Day and The Railway Station.
The Landing of Princess Alexandra at Gravesend is an 1864 oil painting by the British artist Henry Nelson O'Neil. It depicts the arrival of Alexandra of Denmark at Gravesend in Kent on 7 March 1863 accompanied by her family. Alexandra had arrived in Britain for her wedding with the Prince of Wales, the son and heir of Queen Victoria. The wedding took place three days later in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle and was notably painted as The Marriage of the Prince of Wales by William Powell Frith, who like O'Neil had been a member of the artistic group The Clique.
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