John McEwen
Vigour and Pith
William Powell Frith: A Painter and His World
By Christopher Wood
Sutton Publishing 272pp £20 order from our bookshop
In his mid-Victorian heyday William Powell Frith (1819–1909), best remembered as the painter of Ramsgate Sands (1852–54), Derby Day (1856–58) and The Railway Station (1860–62), was the most highly priced artist in the world. Even as late as 1875 his period piece Before Dinner in Boswell’s Lodgings, first exhibited in 1868, fetched £4,500 at Christie’s, the record price for a work by a living artist – easily comparable with the million-plus equivalents currently paid for contemporary art.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'There can’t be many histories of London that have given room, for instance, to the Koreans of New Malden or the Bombay Emporium of Mayfair in the 1930s.'
Jerry White on @profpanayi's 'Migrant City'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/capital-gains-3
'How do those of us who have enough to eat account for hunger? We often imagine it’s about drought, famine, lack of rain, corruption and incompetence. We need to be much more imaginative.'
@moorehl reviews 'Hunger' by @martin_caparros.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/feed-the-world
You only have until Tuesday to make the most of our Mother's Day offer.
An annual subscription to Literary Review, full access to our online archive, and a free copy of 'Miss Austen', the bestselling novel by Gill Hornby, all for just £35.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/mother/