William Powell-Frith - Derby Day (1852).

Authors Avatar

William Powell-Frith:

Derby Day

Sarah Naomi Lewisohn

Centre number: 10148

Candidate number:

List of Illustrations

1.        William Powell-Frith

         

2.        William Powell-Frith

         Derby Day 1852

        Oil on canvas

Tate Britain, London

3.        William Powell-Frith

         Derby Day 1852 (Detail: Child Acrobat Looking at Footman laying Out Food)

        Oil on canvas

Tate Britain, London

4.          William Powell-Frith

         Derby Day 1852 (Detail: Thimble Rigging)

        Oil on canvas

Tate Britain, London

5.        William Powell-Frith

         Derby Day 1852

        Oil on canvas

Tate Britain, London

6.         William Powell-Frith

            Derby Day 1852 (Detail: Young City Gent)

            Oil on canvas

            Tate Britain, London

7.         William Powell-Frith

Derby Day 1852 (Detail: Woman Sitting in Carriage with Fortune Teller)

            Oil on Canvas

            Tate Britain, London

8.         William Powell-Frith

             Derby day 1852 (Detail: Flower Seller)

             Oil on canvas

             Tate Britain, London

9.        John Leech

        Punch


Introduction

The morally and socially degrading activity of gambling was most likely to be William Powell Frith’s (Ill. 1) main motivation for painting Derby Day (1858). (Ill. 2). In Victorian Britain, gambling was regarded as an activity that financially and morally ruined the person to participate.

 Jacob Bell (1819-1859), a socialite and a pharmaceutical chemist, commissioned the painting.

Even before Frith started the painting, the copyright for the engraving was purchased by Ernest Gambart (1814-1902). Fifteen months later, Derby Day was completed and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1858. Here it received a thrilling response from both the public and from art critics of the time.

Frith wrote in a letter to his sister three days after the exhibition had opened, Some people go so far as to say that it is the picture of the age.

Derby Day deals with the contemporary Victorian London crowd attending the annual race at Epsom Downs. To Frith, the racing was of little importance. He said in his memoirs, A Victorian Canvas (DATE), that,

My first Derby had no interest for me as a race

He said that he painted

…with the desire that the human beings should not be paramount.

At the real event in 1860, The Saturday Review observed that,

The student of nature and the student of human character

will both find on Epsom Downs abundant material for observation.

Frith seems to have agreed with this as he said the subject gave him the,

…opportunity of studying life and character.

However, The Illustrated London News suggested that there was another motivation behind going to the races. It claimed that people went, 

…to eat and drink, to stare at one’s neighbour.

        What ever the different opinions, it is clear that Derby Day was a great opportunity to witness the bringing together an enormous gathering of members from all areas of Victorian society.

Frith was just as attracted to the Derby Day crowd as the public were. He recognized the event as providing

…the opportunity of showing an appreciation

of the infinite variety of everyday life,

 found in the kaleidoscopic aspect of a crowd, made up of

 …acrobats…nigger minstrels, gypsy fortune-telling…

carriages filled with pretty women…and the sporting element.

 The mixing of classes was an extraordinary phenomenon, because members from different classes rarely mixed. The social hierarchy that existed normally in Victorian society was on that day ignored. The originality that Frith contributed to the event, together with his choice and conception of social stereotypes that make up the canvas of Derby Day, led to the Morning Post to claim that,

…the words needed to give an account of the copy are the very same that would be required to describe the original.

Few other contemporary artists attempted to compete with Frith’s conception of the Derby Day. Frith’s interest in sociology and anthropology is reflected in this study of the newly industrialized British society. Other artists to engage in the subject matter were George Elgar Hicks, Levin, and J Ritchie. The contemporary enthusiasm for the study and analysis of different types and races coincided with Frith’s Derby Day. In 1863, in a lecture to the Royal Institution on the points of contact between science and art, Cardinal Wiseman recommended ethnography which he defined as the science which classifies the different types of races and nations as a,

…most desirable adjunct

to the artist wishing to achieve maximum originality in his representation of the human being. Several of Frith’s artistic contemporaries responded to this such as the French sculptor Cordier who created portrait studies and statues of ancient and modern racial types together with Edward Long who made more exotic racial types. Frith decided to concentrate on a subject that is more close to western society.

Join now!

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 ...

This is a preview of the whole essay