A Private View at the Royal Academy, 1881
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A Private View at the Royal Academy, 1881 is a painting by William Powell Frith exhibited at he Royal Academy of Arts 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. It is visible in the archway at the back of the room.
The subject of the painting is the contrast between lasting historical achievements and ephemeral fads. The portrait of Disraeli represents the former, and the influence of the Aesthetic movement in dress represents the latter. Aesthetic dress is exemplified by the principal female figures in green, pink and orange clothing. Oscar Wilde, one of the main proponents of Aestheticism, is depicted at the right behind the boy in the green suit, surrounded by female admirers. Behind him, further to the right, a group of opponents glare disapprovingly at him as he speaks. Among them are the journalist G.A. Sala and the artist Philip Calderon.
At the left of the painting Anthony Trollope is portrayed gazing at an "aesthetic" family. In the centre of the composition Frederic Leighton, president of the Academy, talks to a seated woman. William Thomson, the archbishop of York, stands beside him wearing a top hat. Lillie Langtry appears nearby in a white dress. Other famous figures of the day depicted include Robert Browning, Thomas Huxley, William Ewart Gladstone and Mary Braddon. The actors Ellen Terry and Henry Irving are visible standing behind Wilde.[1]
The paintings on the wall accurately reproduce the exhibits of the year. A second portrait of Disraeli in visible on the wall behind Langtrey. On the wall at the right, above Wilde's opponents, is the similarly angry-looking central figure in John Collier's Last Voyage of Henry Hudson. Millais at the extreme right is looking at Lawrence Alma-Tadema's painting Sappho and Alcaeus.
Frith was inspired by the satirical cartoons of George du Maurier (whose head is visible between the orange and green attired aesthetes at the left) and by Gilbert and Sullivan's popular operetta Patience, first performed in 1881. The aesthetic costumes are characterised by features such as gigot sleeves and the "Watteau" back seen in the figure to the left of Wilde, wearing pink. The women in the centre along with the one at the right with the child represent normal fashionable clothing of the day.[2]
[edit] Notes
- ^ Mary Cowling, Frith and his Followers, William Powell Frith: Painting the Victorian Age, 2007, p. 70
- ^ Edwina Ehrman, Frith and Fashion, William Powell Frith: Painting the Victorian Age, 2007, pp. 111-129
