William Powell Frith : painting the Victorian age

William Powell Frith (1819-1909) was the greatest British painter of the social scene since Hogarth.

His panoramas of the wide spectrum of nineteenth-century life broke new ground in their depiction of the diverse London crowd and are icons of their age.

Frith enjoyed unprecedented popularity and success in his lifetime; on six separate occasions special rails had to be built at the Royal Academy to protect his paintings from an admiring public.

Derby Day and the Railway Station are almost as well known today as they were a century ago, yet the artist himself is neglected.

This book explores Frith's place in the development of Victorian painting through a series of wide-ranging essays which examine how his unconventional private life informed his work, how the London crowd was depicted in Victorian painting, Frith's relationship 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 his picture frames.

The book is an important contribution to the literature on art in the Victorian era, and will appeal to specialists and everyone interested in the nineteenth century.