Private View at the Royal Academy
| A Private View at the Royal Academy, 1881 | |
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| Artist | William Powell Frith |
| Year | 1883 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Location | Private Collection |
A Private View at the Royal Academy, 1881 is a painting by the English artist William Powell Frith exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London 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 (visible in the archway at the back of the room). The room is Gallery III, the largest and most imposing room at Burlington House.
Frith worked on the painting through much of 1881 and 1882. He later said in My Autobiography and Reminiscences, published in 1887, that "Beyond the desire of recording for posterity the aesthetic craze as regards dress, I wished to hit the folly of listening to self-elected critics in matters of taste, whether in dress or art. I therefore planned a group, consisting of a well-known apostle of the beautiful, with a herd of eager worshippers surrounding him."
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, to the left, 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, with signature lily buttonhole, surrounded by female admirers.
Behind Wilde, further to the right, a group of opponents glare disapprovingly at him as he speaks: painters Philip Calderon and Henry Stacy Marks, sculptor Joseph Boehm, and journalist G.A. Sala (bare-headed, in white waistcoat). To the left, behind and immediately to the right of Wilde, are the actors Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, with Frederick A. Eaton. To Wilde's left are Lillie Langtry, in a white dress, beside the soberly-dressed William Thomson, Archbishop of York. The man with sideburns looking over Thompson's left shoulder is William Agnew, picture dealer and recently elected Liberal MP for South East Lancashire, next to Lord Chief Justice of England Sir John Coleridge.
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