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.

William Powell Frith (1819-1909) was the most celebrated painter of modern-life subjects in mid-Victorian England and the most popular British artist of that time. Published to mark the bicentenary of his birth and in association with an exhibition at the Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate, this volume of essays offers fresh perspectives on three of Frith's great panoramas of the Victorian scene – Life at the Seaside (Ramsgate Sands), The Derby Day and The Private View at the Royal Academy. They are introduced by a survey of contemporary and later responses to Frith's paintings. Further contributions explore important but hitherto neglected aspects of the artist's life, work and influence. These range from Frith's connections with Yorkshire (the county of his birth) and his circle of women friends to the key role played by the print trade in the popularisation of his images and their re-creation as tableaux on the London stage.

Repainting the work of another into one?s own canvas is a deliberate and often highly fraught act of reuse. This book examines the creation, display, and reception of such images. Artists working in nineteenth-century London were in a peculiar position: based in an imperial metropole, yet undervalued by their competitors in continental Europe. Many claimed that Britain had yet to produce a viable national school of art. Using pictures-within-pictures, British painters challenged these claims and asserted their role in an ongoing visual tradition. By transforming pre-existing works of art, they also asserted their own painterly abilities. Recognizing these statements provided viewers with pleasure, in the form of a witty visual puzzle solved, and with prestige, in the form of cultural knowledge demonstrated. At stake for both artist and audience in such exchanges was status: the status of the painter relative to other artists, and the status of the viewer relative to other audience members. By considering these issues, this book demonstrates a new approach to images of historic displays. Through examinations of works by J.M.W. Turner, John Everett Millais, John Scarlett Davis, Emma Brownlow King, and William Powell Frith, this book reveals how these small passages of paint conveyed both personal and national meanings.

Richly illustrated study drawing on art, literature and science to explore Victorian attitudes towards sight.

In the 1870s Millicent Garrett Fawcett had her purse snatched by a young thief in London. When he appeared in court to testify, she heard the young man charged with 'stealing from the person of Millicent Fawcett a purse containing £1 18s 6d the property of Henry Fawcett.' Long after the episode she recalled: 'I felt as if I had been charged with theft myself.' The English common law which deprived married women of the right to own and control property had far-reaching consequences for the status of women not only in other areas of law and in family life but also in education, and employment, and public life. To win reform of the married women's property law, feminism as an organized movement appeared in the 1850s, and the final success of the campaigns for reform in 1882 was one of the greatest achievements of the Victorian women's movement. Dr Holcombe explores the story of the reform campaign in the context of its time, giving particular attention to the many important men and women who worked for reform and to the debates on the subject which contributed greatly to the formulation of a philosophy of feminism.

Victorian narrative paintings offer a unique insight into the 19th century. The plight of women, the affects of the class system, and the onslaught of industry are all forced upon the attention of the viewer. Within each picture there is a story to uncover, either optimistic, educational, or tragic. Hugely popular in the Victorian period, the paintings tell much about how the Victorians viewed themselves and those whose "transgressive" practices threatened their respectability. An illustrated introduction decodes the conventions used in narrative painting, from literary and artistic allusions to the use of symbolism. The stories contained in works by William Holman Hunt, William Powell Frith, Richard Redgrave, John Everett Millais, and many others are uncovered in detailed examinations of their paintings.