The Derby Day, 1856–58, Tate Gallery.Frith's much smaller "first study" for the painting, sold for £505,250 in December 2011.
The Derby Day is a large oil painting showing a panoramic view of The Derby, painted by 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."[2]
The original version is in Tate Britain in London. As with many of Frith's works, he painted a second version many years later, which is now in the Manchester Art Gallery. A much smaller but well-finished oil study was sold in 2011.
The painting
The painting measures 40 inches (100cm) by 88 inches (220cm) and gives a satirical view of Victorian society. It includes three main scenes, during the annual spectacle of the Derby, when large numbers of Londoners left town for the day to visit the races on Epsom Downs Racecourse, presenting a cross-section of society in a contemporary saturnalian revel. Earlier pictures of the Derby crowds were drawn by illustrators such as John Leech or Dickie Doyle.
On the left, near the private tent of the Reform Club, rich city gentlemen in top hats surround the table of a thimble-rigger who is busy cheating them out of their money. To the right, one stands with his hands in his empty pockets, and shirt gaping, having gambled away his pocketwatch, its curb chain and his shirt-studs. In Frith's 1895, My Autobiography and Reminiscences, the painter-turned-memorialist leaves a charming account of his encounter with a thimble-rig team (operator and accomplices):[3]
"My first visit to Epsom was in the May of 1856 — Blink Bonnie's year. My first Derby had no interest for me as a race, but as giving me the opportunity of studying life and character it is ever to be gratefully remembered. Gambling-tents and thimble-rigging, prick in the garter and the three-card trick, had not then been stopped by the police. So convinced was I that I could find the pea under the thimble that I was on the point of backing my guess rather heavily, when I was stopped by Egg [Frith’s companion], whose interference was resented by a clerical-looking personage, in language much opposed to what would have been anticipated from one of his cloth.
'You,' said Egg, addressing the divine, 'you are a confederate, you know; my friend is not to be taken in.' 'Look here,' said the clergyman, 'don't you call names, and don't call me names, or I shall knock your d — d head off.' 'Will you?' said Egg, his courage rising as he saw two policemen approaching. 'Then I call the lot of you — the Quaker there, no more a Quaker than I am, and that fellow that thinks he looks like a farmer — you are a parcel of thieves!' 'So they are, sir,' said a meek-looking lad who joined us; 'they have cleaned me out.'
'Now move off; clear out of this!' said the police; and the gang walked away, the clergyman turning and extending his arms in the act of blessing me and Egg."
Further left, a young country man in smock is being held back by his woman to prevent him from joining in. In the centre, an acrobat is ready to perform with his son, but the attention of the thin young boy has been distracted by a lavish picnic banquet that is being laid out. Spectators throng behind, drinking champagne in their carriages, with the racecourse grandstand visible in the background. At the far right, a well-dressed man leans against the carriage of his young mistress. Echoing her position, a high class prostitute in brown riding clothes is on the extreme left, one of many seen that could be seen each day riding in Hyde Park. To the right, a thief can be seen stealing a gold watch from a man with his hands in his pockets. Also visible are a group of musicians, and a group of beggars, and street vendors selling their wares.
Detail from the Manchester version (lower right corner)
"The races on Epsom Downs, the great Saturnalia of British sport, bring to the surface all that is most characteristic of London life. In this picture we can discern its elements, its luxury, its wealth, its beauty and refinement, its hopeless misery".[citation needed]
Research by Dr Mary Cowling indicates that Frith depicted individuals from nearly one hundred distinct social types from the finely graduated class system in Victorian England, each distinguished by its particular clothing and physical appearance.[4] Frith believed in physiognomy, so each individual bears the features thought to be typical of his or her social position and character.
After the success of his earlier work, Life at the Seaside (also known as Ramsgate Sands), Frith was keen to find another contemporary piece. He visited Epsom in May 1856 with Augustus Egg and made an initial sketch. Frith was commissioned to paint a five- or six-foot canvas by the chemist Jacob Bell, for a fee of £1,500. He also sold the right to sell copies of the painting, and one of his studies, to art dealer Ernest Gambart for another £1,500. The work took nearly two years to complete, with different arrangements tried out on two large sketches and a further visit to the racecourse before the large work was completed.
Frith used many live models for the painted figures, but also drew inspiration from photographs of Epsom racecourse and of groups of people. He hired an acrobat and his son from a pantomime in Drury Lane, and a jockey named Bundy, and commissioned Robert Howlett to take photographs of unusual groups of people. The 1896 edition of the boys' annual Chums includes an anecdote (page 117) about the boy acrobat who sat as a model for Frith: "This youth had a kind of idea that sitting meant turning head over heels; and every now and then Mr. Frith had to stop him from actually turning a somersault among his casts and drapery." The Chums article also relates how the young boy was impressed with the lavatory in Frith's house, exclaiming to his father: "Oh, father, such a beautiful place – all mahoginy (sic) and a chany (sic) basin to wash in."
Reception
The painting was first exhibited at the Royal Academy exhibition in 1858, where it became so popular that a rail was needed to protect it from the thronging crowds (only the second time that a rail was installed at the Royal Academy exhibition: the first was in 1822 for David Wilkie's Chelsea Pensioners reading the Waterloo Dispatch). The painting was bequeathed to the National Gallery by Jacob Bell in 1859 and but later transferred to the Tate Gallery. Frith was commissioned to paint a second version for James Gresham of Stretford in 1893–94, which has been held by Manchester Art Gallery since 1896.
↑ Frith, William Powell (1889). My autobiography and reminiscences. Chapter XXI, "The Derby Day." (7thed.). London: Richard Bentley and Son. hdl:2027/umn.31951p000223041.
↑ Cowling, Mary (2000). Victorian Figurative Painting: Domestic life and the contemporary social scene. Windsor: Andreas Papadakis. pp.108–136. ISBN1-901092-32-1.
Richard Dadd was an English painter of the Victorian era, noted for his depictions of fairies and other supernatural subjects, Orientalist scenes, and enigmatic genre scenes, rendered with obsessively minuscule detail. Most of the works for which he is best known were created while he was a patient in Bethlem and Broadmoor hospitals.
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 shell game is often portrayed as a gambling game, but in reality, when a wager for money is made, it is almost always a confidence trick used to perpetrate fraud. In confidence trick slang, this swindle is referred to as a short-con because it is quick and easy to pull off. The shell game is related to the cups and balls conjuring trick, which is performed purely for entertainment purposes without any purported gambling element.
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.
Augustus Leopold Egg RA was a British Victorian artist, and member of The Clique best known for his modern triptych Past and Present (1858), which depicts the breakup of a middle-class Victorian family.
Briton Rivière was a British artist of Huguenot descent. He exhibited a variety of paintings at the Royal Academy, but devoted much of his life to animal paintings.
Derby day generally refers to any sporting event featuring a pair of sports teams engaged in a local rivalry.
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.
The Scapegoat (1854–1856) is a painting by William Holman Hunt which depicts the "scapegoat" described in the Book of Leviticus. On the Day of Atonement, a goat would have its horns wrapped with a red cloth – representing the sins of the community – and be driven off.
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.
Mariana is an 1851 oil-on-panel painting by John Everett Millais. The image depicts the solitary Mariana from William Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, as retold in Tennyson's 1830 poem "Mariana". The painting is regarded as an example of Millais's "precision, attention to detail, and stellar ability as a colorist". It has been held by Tate Britain since 1999.
William Henry Knight was an English portrait and genre painter.
Robert Howlett was a pioneering British photographer whose pictures are widely exhibited in major galleries. Howlett produced portraits of Crimean War heroes, genre scenes and landscapes. His photographs include the iconic picture of Isambard Kingdom Brunel which was part of a commission by the London-based weekly newspaper Illustrated Times to document the construction of the world's largest steamship, the SS Great Eastern.
Pegwell Bay, Kent – a Recollection of October 5th 1858 is an oil-on-canvas painting by British artist William Dyce, depicting the landscape at Pegwell Bay, on the east coast of Kent. Considered a Pre-Raphaelite work, Dyce employs a mode of heightened realism and intricate detail to create a powerful landscape. It is considered to be Dyce's best painting, and is held by the Tate Gallery.
In the art world, if an artwork exists in several versions, the one known or believed to be the earliest is called the prime version. Many artworks produced in media such as painting or carved sculpture which create unique objects are in fact repeated by their artists, often several times. It is regarded as a matter of some importance both by art historians and the art market to establish which version has "priority", that is to say was the original work. The presumption usually is that the prime version is the finest, and perhaps the most carefully done, though some later versions can be argued to improve on the originals.
Ramsgate Sands, also known as Life at the Seaside, is an oil-on-canvas painting by William Powell Frith, made from 1851 to 1854, which depicts a beach scene in Ramsgate. The painting 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.
Musidora: The Bather 'At the Doubtful Breeze Alarmed', also known as The Bather, is a name given to four nearly identical oil paintings on canvas by English artist William Etty. The paintings illustrate a scene from James Thomson's 1727 poem Summer in which a young man accidentally sees a young woman bathing naked, and is torn between his desire to look and his knowledge that he ought to look away. The scene was popular with English artists as it was one of the few legitimate pretexts to paint nudes at a time when the display and distribution of nude imagery was suppressed.
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.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
