* FRITH, WILLIAM POWELL, RA., a native of Yorkshire, was born iu 1819. Having shown a decided predilection for art, he was about 1835 placed in Sass's school, Charlotte-street, Bloomsbury, and thence proceeded to the schools of the Royal Academy. After a trial with an unimportant picture at the British Institution in 1839, he the following year sent to the exhibition of the Royal Academy a very promising painting of Malvolio before the Countess Olivia.' In suc ceeding years he contributed pictures of the same order from Shakspere Scott, Sterne, Goldsmith, and 3Ioliere, making his way steadily as a clever and careful artist, remarkable however more for skill and taste in execution than for originality of conception or intellectual power.
In 1844 he made indeed a somewhat more ambitious effort than be had previously essayed, in an Interview between Johu Knox and Mary Queen of Scots, respecting her Marriage with Darnley ;' but it was not very successful, and he returned to his more homely range of subjects in the Village Pastor,' from Goldsmith, which appeared at the exhibition of the Royal Academy in 1845, and obtained his election as an associate of that institution. The next year he furnished one of his'best pictures, 'Madame Jourdain discovering her Husband at the Dinner which he gave to the Belle Marquise and the Count Dorante,' in which Mr. Frith has perhaps made as near an approach to humour as in any picture ho has yet painted. The next year however, stimulated by his newly-acquired honours, he put forth his powers iu a larger and more elaborate work, An English Merry-Making a Hundred Years ago,' which attracted general attention, and, though it was a year of great pictures, Mr. Frith's not only kept its place, but proved indeed one of the most popular pictures of the year. The next season saw from his pencil three pictures of a somewhat different character—' An Old Woman, accused of having Bewitched a Peasant, brought before a Country Justice,' in which the mingling of mirth and sentiment was not very happy ; 'A Stage-Coach Adventure in 1750;' and a Scene from the Bourgeois Gentilhomme. In 1849appeared his Coming of Age,' so well known from Mr. Hell's engraving. It is only necessary to mention the most marked of his subsequent pictures. In the exhibition of 1851 he had a very clever work,
Hogarth brought before the Governor of Calais as a Spy: Pope making love to Lady Mary Wortley Montague' (1852), though a pretentious was an unpleasant rendering of a subject essentially unadapted for anything better than a coarse wood-cut. A far better picture was ' Life at the Sea-Side' (1853), a view of Ramsgate beach in the height of the 'season,' depicted with much quaint grace and some humour—like a sketch of Leech's worked up into a well-painted picture. This picture caught the general fancy more perhaps than any other of Mr. Frith's works, and had the honour of being purchased by her Majesty : an engraving from it is now in course of execution by Mr. Sharpe. 'Maria tricks Malvolio,' was the title of his principal contribution in 1855; and Many happy Returns of the Day,' that in 1856. Mr. Frith was elected R.A. in 1653.
Mr. Frith is on the whole one of the most equal of our established painters. His failures are chiefly such as arise from mischoice of subject; the technical part is always carefully executed, and seldom exhibits any very palpable mistake or shortcoming. But if there is never any great failure there is never any distinguished success. His pictures are literally level to every capacity. His ladies are always plump and pretty and well-dressed. Whatever their part, they carry all the dainty drawing-room gracefulnesees and proprieties into it. They ' are evidently playing their part with a full consciousness that they are being looked at and admired while playing it. The men are equally plump, smooth-faced, and well-dressed, and even more artificial. The children, alike in their looks and clothes and behaviour, are all that an affectionate mamma could wish her darlings to be. Mr. Frith's pictures oonsequeutly aro the delight of the ladies, and find special favour with well-conditioned citizens. Hie technical merits are just such as confirm and scours the kind of admiration which the range of his subjects and the character of his personages excite. His colour is always bright and fresh and gay. His drawing is good, without parade or affectation. His touch is light and neat, yet sufficiently varied; and he finishes every part with scrupulous care.