William Powell Frith: The People's Painter

London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2019. 192 pages, illustrations (chiefly colour); 28 cm. Published on the occasion of an exhibition at Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate, UK (15 June to 29 September,.2019. Firm binding, clean inside copy. OVERSIZE! No priority/international, except by arrangement. Richly illustrated with colour plates. "William Powell Frith (1819-1909) was the most celebrated painter of modern-life subjects in mid-Victorian England and the most popular British artist of that time. Published to mark the bicentenary of his birth and in association with an exhibition at the Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate, this volume of essays offers fresh perspectives on three of Frith's great panoramas of the Victorian scene - Life at the Seaside (Ramsgate Sands), The Derby Day and The Private View at the Royal Academy. They are introduced by a survey of contemporary and later responses to Frith's paintings. Further contributions explore important but hitherto neglected aspects of the artist's life, work and influence. These range from Frith's connections with Yorkshire (the county of his birth) and his circle of women friends to the key role played by the print trade in the popularisation of his images and their re-creation as tableaux on the London stage." - Publisher. CONTENTS: Lenders; Introduction and Acknowledgements; Frith's Critical Fortune, by Richard Green; Frith, Family Life and Friends: Frith's Yorkshire Connections, by Richard Green; In Frith's Studio; The Painter of Modern Life: Victorians at Leisure: Ramsgates Sands, by Caroline Arscott; Frith's Derby Day, by Mark Bills; The Painter of Modern Life: London: 'Frith's Grand Picture of the Railway Station Nightly Realized': the People's Painter in the People's Theatre, by Robert Whelan; Private Views: William Powell Frith, Harry Furniss and Oscar Wilde, by Anne Anderson; Frith and Writers, Past and Present: Admiration and Sensation: William Powell Frith and Mary Elizbeth Braddon, by Jane Sellars; Frith and Literature; Frith's 'Olden Time': Friths Construction of an English Rural Idyll in the 'Olden Time', by Alex Werner; From Pictures to Print: Art for All: Frith and the Print Trade, 1840-1890, by Donato Esposito.. Paperback. Fine. 4to.