Many artists had to assert themselves against their own parents in their youth. Not so William Powell Frith: his talent was recognized and encouraged early on by his own father, a hotelier in North Yorkshire.
In addition to his large, partly monumental landscapes, Frith made a name for himself above all with genre paintings. Victorian Great Britain was marked by the triumphal march of industry, but also by deep social contrasts from great wealth to crushing mass misery.
Frith belonged to the group of painters who were not afraid to capture poverty on canvas. The famous painting "The Crossing Sweeper" shows a ragged little boy preparing to clean the street in front of a well-dressed lady with a broom to get a tip. Two other works by Frith, "The Derby Day" and "Ramsgate Sands", which both depict mass scenes at horse races and on the beach, respectively, do not skimp on the contrast between rich and poor. "The Derby Day" unites one hundred typical figures of all social classes known at that time.
Writers like Charles Dickens lent a voice to poverty - painters like Frith gave it a face. It is no coincidence that many of Frith's paintings have Dickens' novels as their subject. Some of them later served as models for illustrations. That John Powell Frith was elected to the Royal Academy in 1858 illustrates the changing attitudes of his contemporaries: Only a few years earlier, it was unthinkable that paintings of the "scum of society" would have found their way into Britain's highest temple of art.
Another of John Powell Frith's specialities was the production of several pictures on the same subject - often with a gap of several decades. Frith painted "The Crossing Sweeper" three times, the last time in 1890 - the lady always wore current fashion. At that time, after Jack the Rippers' bloodlust had dragged the mass misery in London's East End into the spotlight, the social question was more topical than ever.
Of course, Frith was quite ambivalent: the painter of harmonious family pictures had twelve children by his wife and seven by his mistress - the painter of poverty was at the same time a traditionalist who strictly rejected modern art movements such as Impressionism, the Pre-Raphaelites and the aesthetics of an Oscar Wilde.
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.jpg "Private View at the Royal Academy by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Sterne")
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.jpg "Alexander Pope Declared His Love to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "The Derby Day by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "At My Window, Boulogne by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "A Dream of the Future by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "An English Merry-Making, a Hundred Years Ago by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "The Village Clergyman, illustration from")
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.jpg "Portrait of Mary Freer Seated Small Full Length on a Garden Seat by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "The Railway Station, 1862 by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "The Railway Station by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "The Flower Seller by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "The Family Lawyer by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Sir Roger de Coverley and Addison with")
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.jpg "Scene from Moliere")
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.jpg "Poverty and Wealth, 1888 by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Portrait of Charles Dickens by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "The Railway Station by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Tenby Prawnseller by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Sketch of the Artist")
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.jpg "The Railway Station, 1866 by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Ramsgate Sands, No. 2 by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "At the Opera by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Charles Dickens, English novelist by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "The Road to Ruin: College, engraved by Leopold Flameng, published by The Art Union of London by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Love Token by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "The Invalid by William Powell Frith")
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_-_(MeisterDrucke-1133934).jpg "Head and Shoulders of a Girl by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "The Return from Labor by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Lammermoor")
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.jpg "Portrait of Annie Gambart by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Charles Dickens by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Garden Flowers Making a Posy by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "The Private View, 1881, 1882 by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Wandering Thoughts by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Evening Prayer by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Bleak House: The Crossing Sweeper by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "The Artist")
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.jpg "The Crossing Sweeper by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "The Knight and the Maid by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "The Reverie by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Ramsgate Sands by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "The Proposal, 1853 by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Honeywood Introducing the Bailiffs to Miss Richland as His Friends by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Self-Portrait at the Age of 83 by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Scene from the Bourgeois Gentilhomme by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "The Road to Ruin, engraved by L. Flameng, 1878 by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "The Marriage of the Prince of Wales on 10th March 1863 by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "The Rejected Poet: Alexander Pope and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Lord Foppington Relating his Adventures by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "The Railway Station, 1862 by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "The Crossing Sweeper by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Ramsgate Sands, 1854, 1948 by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Othello and Desdemona, c.1840-56 by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Scene in the Paris Shop from A Sentimental Journey, 1841 by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "John Knox reproving Mary, Queen of Scots, illustration from")
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.jpg "The Duel, Twelfth Night by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Hope and Fear by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "The Sleepy Model by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Hogarth Brought Before the Governor of Calais as a Spy by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "The Lovers by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Coming of Age in the Olden Time by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "The Two Central Figures in Derby Day by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Coming of Age in the Olden Time by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "The Minstrel by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "The Lovers by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "The Pulse, the Husband by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "At the Opera by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Lovers, 1855 by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Sleep, 1873 by William Powell Frith")
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 - (MeisterDrucke-180811).jpg "Derby Day by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Portrait of a lady resting with her dog by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "A Stage-Coach Adventure in 1750 by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "King Henry and Anne Boleyn Deer Shooting in Windsor Forest, 1903 by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "A Stagecoach Adventure, Bagshot Heath, 1848 by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "The Pet Fawn, 1860 by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Derby Day by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Bedtime by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Hope by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Self-Portrait at the Age of 83 by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "The Novice, 1862 by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "The Lovers by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "The Rejected Poet by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Hope by William Powell Frith")
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 - (MeisterDrucke-59461).jpg "Lady with a Parasol (study for Derby Day) by William Powell Frith")
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_-_(MeisterDrucke-1131634).jpg "The Pink Dress by William Powell Frith")
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_-_(MeisterDrucke-907511).jpg "Hurrying Girl by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Advertisement, Sunlight Soap by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Dolly Varden by WA Mansell and Co")
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.jpg "Retribution by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Tenby Prawn Seller by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "Charles Dickens, 1886 by William Powell Frith")
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_-_(MeisterDrucke-1466454).jpg "The Derby Day by William Powell Frith")
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.jpg "The Lovers by William Powell Frith")
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_-_(MeisterDrucke-1466485).jpg "Claude Duval, Illustration from")
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.jpg "Village Merrymaking by William Powell Frith")
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