Frith, William Powell (
b Aldfield, nr. Ripon, Yorkshire, 9 Jan. 1819;
d London, 2 Nov. 1909). English painter. He began his career as a portraitist and painter of literary subjects (from Shakespeare, Scott, and other authors), but in the 1850s he turned to contemporary scenes, with which he had enormous commercial success. Three of his pictures are particularly renowned—crowded, anecdote-packed scenes that rank among the most familiar images of Victorian life:
Life at the Seaside (or
Ramsgate Sands) (1854, Royal Coll.),
Derby Day (1858, Tate, London), and
The Railway Station (1862, Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, Egham).
Derby Day was so popular when shown at the
Royal Academy that it had to be railed off from the throng of admirers—a distinction previously accorded only to
Wilkie's Chelsea Pensioners in 1822. Frith's
My Autobiography and Reminiscences (1887) and
Further Reminiscences (1888) give lively accounts of the art world of his time. He continued exhibiting until 1902 and by the end of his long life he was regarded as a ‘specimen of Victorian philistinism’ (Jeremy Maas,
Victorian Painters, 1969). His reputation greatly revived as part of the general re-evaluation of Victorian art after the Second World War.
