![]() Then comes a bride, bridegroom and two bridesmaids.īehind them more porters are stowing luggage on the roof of a carriage, where it will be covered by a heavy tarpaulin for the journey. Beside them is a bearded man in a fur coat, modelled on a refugee Venetian nobleman, who had given lessons in Italian to Frith’s daughters. The boy clutches a cricket bat so is presumably off to school for the summer term. In the foreground is a group consisting of Frith and his family, with his wife kissing the couple’s younger son goodbye (at the left of this detail). William Powell Frith (1819–1909), engraved by Francis Holl (1866) The Railway Station (detail) (1862), original oil on canvas, this print mixed media engraving on wove, finished with hand colouring, 66 x 123 cm, Private collection. Above them are the cast iron arches of its vaulted glass roof, from which thoroughly modern gaslights are suspended. A railway porter is pushing a large barrow piled high with trunks and boxes to be loaded onto the train. Wikimedia Commons.Īt the left, Frith shows one of the early steam locomotives, with its open cab and pile of coal. The scene shown takes place on the platform, where a large and disparate group of people are assembled preparing to board the train. It was the London terminus of the Great Western Railway, with trains running to Bristol, Cardiff, Exeter, Plymouth and the West Country. It was a cutting-edge building, constructed from cast iron and glass and lit by gaslight. Paddington Station, completed a decade earlier, had been built by the great Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. It’s rich with little social vignettes, and among its many faces are associates and friends of the artist, including the dealer who paid for it. Frith was not only thoroughly modern and commercial in its exhibition – it wasn’t shown at the Royal Academy, but in a private gallery which charged one shilling (£0.05) per visit – but he used photographs in its execution. The Railway Station (1862) is set in the crowded and busy Paddington railway station in London. William Powell Frith (1819–1909), engraved by Francis Holl (1866) The Railway Station (1862), original oil on canvas, this print mixed media engraving on wove, finished with hand colouring, 66 x 123 cm, Private collection. Frith himself had been paid over £5,000 by the dealer who commissioned it, and that dealer made a handsome profit when he sold it on for Holl’s prints. The best image that I can find of this major piece of Victorian art is a print engraved by Francis Holl, working for Henry Graves & Co, who bought the painting for over £16,000. Sadly, as the original is now in the Royal Holloway, University of London, and a smaller copy is in the Royal Collection, usable images of them aren’t available. With the success of his two earlier human panoramas showing Ramsgate Sands (1854) and The Derby Day (1856-58) (above), Frith set to work on his greatest painting, a similar human panorama showing the interior of one of London’s major railway stations. William Powell Frith (1819–1909), The Derby Day (1856-58), oil on canvas, 140.5 x 264 cm, The Tate Gallery, London. In the previous article in this series, I looked at the first human panoramas painted by William Powell Frith (1819–1909), but stopped short of the painting which many think is his greatest. ![]()
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