William Powell Frith: Painting in the Victorian Age - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300121903 ISBN 13: 9780300121902

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2007

Synopsis

William Powell Frith (1819-1909) was the greatest British painter of the social scene since Hogarth. His panoramas of nineteenth-century life broke new ground in their depiction of the diverse London crowd, and they are now icons of their age. Frith’s popularity in his lifetime was unprecedented; on six separate occasions special railings had to be built at the Royal Academy to protect his paintings from an admiring public.
Derby Day and The Railway Station are nearly as well known today as a century ago, yet the artist who painted them is now neglected. This book explores Frith's place in the development of Victorian painting: the impact of his unconventional private life on his work, his relationships with Hogarth and Dickens, his influence on popular illustration, the place of costume in his paintings, his female models, his painting materials and practice, and much more. The book makes an important contribution to the literature on art in the Victorian era and to our understanding of the nineteenth century.

About this title

About the Author:

Mark Bills is curator of the Watts Gallery, Compton, England. He was formerly curator of paintings, prints and drawings at the Museum of London. Vivien Knight is curator of Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London, which holds a fine collection of Victorian paintings.

From Booklist:

After more than a century of near oblivion, the Victorian painter William Powell Frith is suddenly getting lots of attention. Christopher Wood's biography of the once-popular artist has now been ably supplemented, and in some ways eclipsed, by this lavishly illustrated volume. Editors Bills and Knight's collection of essays is more scholarly and emotionally distanced than Wood's--you miss his affectionate raconteur's voice--but in the end it's considerably more useful to contemporary readers. This is mainly because of the wealth of Frith's pictures reproduced here, most in glorious color, but also because of the added clarity with which the essayists help define the painter's character by showing how it reflected two of his most important influences, William Hogarth and Charles Dickens. Frith's parallels with Dickens are especially striking. Both were severe moralists who nonetheless engaged in extramarital affairs with young women; both combined Left-leaning political tendencies with savvy business instincts; and both were simultaneously modern and reactionary, embracing the moment but abhorring change. Kevin Nance
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About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0300121903
• ISBN 13: 9780300121902
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 180
• Editor: Bills Mark, Knight Vivien