Frith’s task was to spatially organize all the different figures onto one canvas. He commented in his memoirs:
I cannot say I have ever found
…a difficulty in composing a great number of figures into a more or less harmonious whole.
He insisted that too much time can be spent in making preliminary studies, from nature or from separate figures or groups. He arranged the general lines of his composition into a rough charcoal drawing and after making hundreds of studies from models of all prominent figures, he prepared a small, careful oil sketch with colour and effect carefully planned so that when he chose to begin the large picture he found
…the course clear before him.
Frith also made use of the top photographer at the time, Robert Hewlett to record scenes at Epsom to help him in the finishing of his picture of Derby Day.
Frith took much time and care over his characters. Although only one study used by Frith for Derby Day is known, Frith’s own remarks reveal that he made individual studies of all the characters present on the canvas. His interest in physiognomy and the emphasis he placed on securing suitable models show that Frith conformed with the popular belief that the mental traits of a person were reflected in the was a person looked. In painted form, his types were easy to recognize, created within the bounds of cultural ideology and expectations shared by the artist and the public. Frith ensured the recognition of his figures not only through their clothing but also through contemporary physiognomic beliefs associated with the assumed moral nature of various types of social individuals, for example the good versus the bad, throughout the different members of the social classes. All the artists of this period, who aimed to tell a story through a portrait of interaction between various identifiable characters, were likely to be interested in physiognomy.
Several other paintings of his including the Salon d’Or (1871), the Road to Ruin (1878), and the Race for Wealth (1880)
Analysis
Frith decided, at first that the principal incident of the picture would be a hungry child acrobat distracted by seeing an extravagant picnic hamper filled with lobster and other rare delicacies which are being laid out by the footman (Ill.3). This incident is surrounded with an incredible diversity of human life; touts, gypsies, beggars, policemen, fashionable and unfashionable characters all combined into one carefully planned composition. The viewer would gain as much satisfaction from looking at this painting as they would from looking at the scene that it was painted from because Frith has managed to illustrate every single detail of each of the characters, to make them as realistic as possible.
We see the game of ‘thimble rigging’ (Ill. 4) to the left of the painting. This is a form of gambling which involves the player guessing which one of three thimbles hides a pea. A man is standing playing the game on a small table in the middle of a watching crowd. A young ‘city gent’ (Ill. 5) is one of the spectators, stands looking defeated, with his hands deep in his empty pockets. A con man, dressed in boots and spurs, stands with a whip behind his back, facing the eager crowd. Immediately to his left, John Thurtell, a well known Victorian murderer, whose physiognomy was studied by both scientists and artists, holds a £5 note in his hand. Under the thimble-rigging table, a bull dog growls at the mongrel owned by a country man wearing a smock, whose wife is desperately trying to stop him from joining in the game. In the crowd, stands a figure wearing a red jacket holding up what seems to be a race list. This character is modelled on an artist and friend of Frith, Richard Dadd (1819-1886).
Frith’s intention was to keep as many horses in the background as possible. He said in his biography that his determination was to keep as many horses in the background as possible which did not arise from him not being able to paint them properly, but from my desire that the human being should be paramount.
To the extreme right of the painting, a woman sits in her carriage and refuses to have her fortune told by a fortune teller (Ill. 7). He lover leans idly against the carriage. This incident is based on Punch (Ill. 9) by John Leech (1817-1864). The flower girl (Ill. 8) that stands barefoot offering flowers to the gentleman was quite possibly derived from the chapter in Charles Dickens’s (1812-1870) Old Curiosity Shop that describes a day at Epsom.
The final canvas was not started until 1857. After over a year of continuous hard work, it was finished in time for the 1858 Royal Academy exhibition where it was highly popular. The crowds that gathered around it were so large that policeman had to guard it. The painting was a favourite of Prince Albert and Queen Victoria.
Two Types
There are two main types that Frith explores in this painting. One particular type explored by Frith is found to the left of the Derby day, in the young gentleman in checked trousers and top hat. To the viewer looking at him today he would remain just another member of the crowd. However, to the Victorian eye, he would have been representative of a well-known type, he
Young Gentleman: the Out and Out Young Gentleman ,
a term given by the novelist Charles Dickens (1812-1870). In 1847, Albert Smith published a book titled The Natural History of the Gent, in which he referred to the species as,
...a race by themselves.
In his novels, Dickens portrays the young gent as a juvenile snob with his thick tasselled cane, and who walks with a ridiculous swagger. Depictions of such young men, known to walk the streets of London, were popular in cartoons at the time, such as those of Leech, whose biography was written by Frith. In the biography, Frith quoted Thackeray’s appraisal of Leech’s gent
…who all of us know,
which he found true to life in every detail, from the
…outrageous pins and pantaloons
to the common habits of sucking his cane in the streets and smoking cigars. This type of adolescent male was seen as the product of the new urbanization and modern commercialism of London, bearing
…the best and the worst effects of modern city life
as Charles Kingly remarked. Academia too upheld these presumptions. N. Macnamara, a Victorian anthropologist, maintained that the children of such third generation of London city dwellers possessed psychological tendencies, making than
…unreliable in times of difficulty, excitable and nervous…wanting in self reliance…the effect of constant noise and bustle and other conditions which surrounded them in the homes of their childhood .
Such young gentlemen were characterized as facile, pretentious, impulsive, and sophisticated.
Frith’s conception of the young gent bears all the qualities that the young gent was supposed to have at the time, however, Frith has treated the young gent more sympathetically than most people would. He is weakly built and is contrasted in juxtaposition to the strongly built, strong featured countryman on his right. The degree of corruption which McNamara identifies in the young gent is emphasized here through illustration. The stress of modern city life is displayed by the young gentleman not only through his physically weaker frame but also through his physiognomy and expression. Laziness rather than depth, concerning both intellect and feeling, were associated with the type of the young gent. The carelessness of the adolescent gentleman is communicated in other details of the painting. To the Victorian eye, the absence of the young gent’s typical chain and watch would be immediately recognizable. These can be found on the canvas in the hands of the thimble-riggers just behind him. The young gent has obviously had his watch and chain stolen by the thimble riggers. His shirt studs are also missing. The way he clutches his two hands at a knot in the lining of his trouser implies the failed attempt of Frith’s young gentleman to be wary of such pick pocketing, further suggesting the young man’s naivety.
Along with the physiognomical expectation of the weak face, small jaw and delicate physique of the young gent, his expression conforms with the type of the young gent. A cigar has dropped from his pale convulsed mouth, possibly portraying an inner dissatisfaction with himself and everything that surrounds him. By depicting a figure that conformed to the stereotypical character of the young gent, highlighting his moral and physical nature, Frith produced a figure that would immediately be recognizable to the Victorian audience.
Another type that Frith includes in this painting of the races is that of a criminal, an absolute necessity for any depiction of any London crowd scene. Mayhew and Binney observed this in their investigations into the criminal world of London,
…a London crowd is an awful thing, when you reflect upon the number of infamous characters of which it is necessarily composed.
Here, the most villainous of all is singled out from a small crowd of undesirable characters. He is placed to the left of the picture, wearing a green coat and is brandishing a bank note. He is not conspicuously villainous; however to the Victorian eye that would be trained in physiognomic characterization, his character would be unmistakeable. He would have resembled a very specific individual, hanged thirty or forty years prior to Frith’s Victorian audience. This figure was that of John Thurtell (1794-1824), the archetypal cold-blooded murderer. Thurtell had shot, clubbed and cut the throat of a prominent solicitor and gambling associate of his, William Wear. Frith had a good reason to remember Thurtell because in the place that Frith received his early training to help with his anatomical studies, Sass’s academy, casts from Thurtell’s head and body were kept.
Frith’s characterization of this criminal type, reflects how seriously physiognomy was taken in Victorian times. Criminals of the era were thought to be a completely different race, and were thought to have different physical, mental and ethical characteristics. They were also thought to be exempt of manners and morals that normal ohnest people would have. Charles Dicken’s writing of Demeanour of Murderers insisted that evil is always detectable to the physiognomist. In this book Dickens writes, “Nature never writes a bad hand. Her writing, as it may be read in the human countenance, is invariable legible if we come at all trained to the reading of it. The existence of a criminal type was accepted as definate sociological fact. Frith confirms this on his canvas. Frith’s criminal displays the criminal physiognomy described by Victorian specialists, bearing the extreme characteristics that are associated with low development. All of Frith’s criminals in this painting bear a disproportionately large jaw, forehead and skull. To a physiognomist, this would suggest a sense and disposition to crime. The convex chin that the criminal bears would also signify low development. When Frith was in the process of designing his character, he was greatly inspired by Leech’s cartoon.
If ever a moral lesson was inculcated by a work of art,
this drawing is an example.
Frith commented on this cartoon. Frith’s audience recognized the illustrated types as living, realistic, contemporary individuals and Frith’s response to Leech’s characters was similar. His own social and political attitudes must have made it an easy task for him to please his public as his idea and conception of types was the same as the ideas of the majority.
Class Representation
Frith’s crowd and those that would be found in Epsom Downs present a cross section of contemporary society. In this painting, Frith has conveyed the social inequality that would be found at the time. He incorporates the aristocratic, upper class with the lower, unsavoury types and mingles the middle classes with both. The Art Journal remarked on this class range incorporating the,
…upper extremity in the drawing-rooms of Beligravia and its lower in the darkest rooms of Whitechapel ,
while in between were to be find,
…diversely-charactered and many shaded varieties of society, which all contribute their quota on the Derby Day.
We can see this on the far left of the painting. Outside the gambling tent, a lady of the demi-monde in the riding habit of a pretty horse breaker, two green young aristocrats entering the tent with a respectable gentleman protesting to a policeman, a simple country couple and a gang of cheats and vagabonds centred on the thimble-riggers, are shown closely together. In the centre of the painting, a grout of gypsy children and a family occupy the foreground. Immediately behind them, the aristocratic parties sit in their carriages.
Class assumptions are shown throughout Derby Day. Frith highlights the ugly, low morals of the types that he depicts in this painting through their physiognomies. The members of the thimble-rigging party convey their low morals and evil behaviour in the coarseness of their features and the muscles in their face, the texture of their skin and their range of unpleasant expressions. Their noses are bulbous and protrude, their mouths are wide, full and they have unsensuos lips. They have tiny, beady eyes. Frith even makes use of the racial stereotype of the Jew as they were thought to be of lower class in Victorian times. The Jewish man’s heavy jowls gather in creases over his tie as he stares at the young gent’s watch chain, pointing to his avarice, as if planning to steal it. However, not all representations of the lower class had unflattering features. Frith did choose to present an idealized form of the
…respectable working man,
in the form of a country farmer and his wife, who stand towards the centre of the painting and appear to be absolutely appalled by what is going on around them. Frith also depicted this form of superior member of the working class in his Railway Station, in the form of the railway officials who have a special place in the Victorian social structure. The upper classes feared this type of class conscious, respectable working man as this is the type of person that could cause a revolution, and get rid of the privileged, higher classes. The honest working man was painted by Frith in both of his paintings as idealized and desirable. Although Frith was a loyal republican, he was particularly conservative in his views. Frith, like most members of the middle class, was afraid of a rebellion by the lower classes. He was afraid that the lower classes would have too much liberty and equality. Frith’s depiction of the lower class respectable working class was particularly interesting because it was not a type that was commonly believed to exist in Victorian society but was a type that was thought to be a necessity for the maintenance of Victorian society.
Frith’s representation of aristocratic life is not entirely depicted as ideal. Artists were encouraged to produce uplifting examples of the upper class as uplifting to the rest of society, bearing all the physical and moral attributes that they were expected to have. Towards the centre right of the painting, aristocratic beauties can be seen, bearing all the characteristics that one would expect to find in a person of such high moral value. The aristocratic men in this painting are extremely idealized. They have deeply blue set eyes, chiselled lips, well curved nostrils, long faces, aquiline noses, and straight profiles. The chins found on the aristocratic men also conform to the ideal way of to look in Victorian times. The hand without a glove of a right-handed gentleman is smooth, with long, curving fingers and finely shaped oval nails.
Not all of the aristocratic figures in this painting have the idealized characteristics just mentioned. Although Frith does adjust the appearance of his figures according to the physiognomies of the class they belong to, he varies their degree of beauty according to what would be expected of them at birth and what they would have gained or lost during their life time in terms of their morals. Some of the figures belonging to the upper class are depicted in the process of losing their morals and dignity. The upper class group that are dressed in drag, although superior to the common people, do not have the beautiful, idealized characteristics that their physiognomies would suggest them to have. This is perhaps because their behaviour is not as refined and dignified as the other aristocrats. They are set up in contrast to these other, better looking aristocrats whose behaviour and physique reflect a higher level of decorum and nobility. With this lower group, the women’s features are not so idealized, and their profiles are much less regular to the members of the barouche party. One of the men is even wearing a false nose, and bears wide full lips. The tousled hair man and the one leaning towards the girl on stilts have weaker chins, are shorter and are less firmly defined. His heavy lidded eyes give him a grim, foolish expression. Frith is trying to put the message across that although aristocrats are expected to have idealized, perfect features, they can easily lose them through abuse. This is demonstrated by the two young aristocratic men entering the gambling tent. The expression of the last figure is disappointed and looks as though he is about to lose or has already lost.
Conclusion
Derby Day was not only one of the most sensational crowd scenes William Powell Frith was to paint but it also satisfied the crowd conscious Victorian audience it was designed for. An entire range of characters that would have been found in Victorian society are provided in this painting. His strong characterization of the different figures were bound to provoke strong reactions amongst the members of society, revealing a passionate interest in the intensity of emotion, which can only be explained in physiognomical belief. Frith did not possess the refined sensibility or the degree of intellectual judgement to invert the statement that he was making about Victorian society, which was the reason for its success. This clear, simple painting reflects Frith’s conception of modern day life and his contemporary beliefs won the reception of thousands of people and is still regarded as a masterpiece today. The identification of the familiar individual and social types is the main attraction of this painting, and was a factor that existed in real life.
Bibliography
A Victorian Canvas
Christopher Wagner
(1957)
The Artist as an Anthropologist ; Victorian Art
Mary Cowling
Cambridge University Press
Victorian Painting
Lionel Lambourne
Phiadon (1999)
Art Review
(30th April 1958)
Victorian Painting
Christopher Wood
Bulfinch
(1999)
Victorian Painting
Julian Treuherz
(1993)
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Princeton University Press
(2000)
Illustration 1
Illustration 2
Illustration 3
London Illustrated News 1858
Frith, biography of John Leech
Frith, biography of John Leech