Search results for ""Author Mark Bills""

The first retrospective of artist Francis 'Frank' Montague Holl, one of the great painters of the Victorian era. Francis 'Frank' Montague Holl (1845-1888) was notable for his tragic social realism as well as his penetrating portraits. Although highly respected in his lifetime, his early death meant that he never fully received the acclaim that his work merited. Holl was a prodigiously talented artist who entered the the Royal Academy Schools at the age of fifteen, where he won a gold medal for religious painting in 1863. A year later, two of his paintings were accepted for exhibition at the Royal Academy where he showed work regularly until his death. He was also commissioned by Queen Victoria to paint No Tidings from the Sea. Holl became part of an informal school of social-realist painting that flourished during the 1870s. Its aim was to draw attention to the everyday conditions of the working classes and the poor, and to implicitly criticise the social structures that maintained such conditions. His great subject pictures, often on bleak themes, were frequently criticised for their darkness but found great favour with the public, who empathised with his depictions. Funeral processions, child mortality and grief were very much part of life and his emotive images struck a chord with his audience. In 1879, when Holl exhibited a portrait of the engraver Samuel Cousins at the Royal Academy, it created a sensation. In the nine years of life that remained he painted over 150 portraits: some of the greatest of his age-achievements which can be seen on a par with those of Watts and Millais. His influence was felt in his lifetime and later through the work of Van Gogh, who greatly admired Holl. Exploring in parallel the subject paintings and he portraits, this book considers the importance of Holl's output and his continued relevance today. Leading scholars in the field look at different aspects of Holl's painting, while full catalogue entries examine certain works in detail.

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William Powell Frith (1819-1909) was the greatest British painter of the social scene since Hogarth. His panoramas of nineteenth-century life broke new ground in their depiction of the diverse London crowd, and they are now icons of their age. Frith’s popularity in his lifetime was unprecedented; on six separate occasions special railings had to be built at the Royal Academy to protect his paintings from an admiring public.Derby Day and The Railway Station are nearly as well known today as a century ago, yet the artist who painted them is now neglected. This book explores Frith's place in the development of Victorian painting: the impact of his unconventional private life on his work, his relationships with Hogarth and Dickens, his influence on popular illustration, the place of costume in his paintings, his female models, his painting materials and practice, and much more. The book makes an important contribution to the literature on art in the Victorian era and to our understanding of the nineteenth century.Exhibition Schedule:Guildhall, London (November 2006 – March 2007)Harrogate (opens April 2007)

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