These were the Road to Ruin (1878), about the dangers of gambling, and the Race for Wealth (1880) about reckless financial speculation. Later in his career he painted two series of five pictures each, telling moral stories in the manner of William Hogarth. His 1858 painting The Crossing Sweeper has been described as breaking "new ground in its description of the collision of wealth and poverty on a London street." Pope Makes Love To Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1852) In 1865 he was chosen to paint the marriage of the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) and Princess Alexandra of Denmark. Another well-known painting was The Railway Station, a scene of Paddington station. It was so popular that it had to be protected by a specially installed rail when shown at the Royal Academy of Arts. This 1858 composition was bought by Jacob Bell for £1,500. He followed this with The Derby Day, depicting scenes among the crowd at the race at Epsom Downs, which was based on photographic studies by Robert Howlett. In ' Ramsgate Sands' (also known as 'Life at the Seaside', 1854) he depicted visitors and entertainers at the seaside resort. Following the precedent of Wilkie, but also imitating the work of his friend Dickens, Frith created complex multi-figure compositions depicting the full range of the Victorian class system, meeting and interacting in public places. Wilkie's famous painting The Chelsea Pensioners was a spur to the creation of Frith's own most famous compositions. The principal influence on his work was the hugely popular domestic subjects painted by Sir David Wilkie. He was a member of The Clique, which also included Richard Dadd. Mr WP Frith RA as portrayed by Spy in Vanity Fair. In the 1840s he often based works on the literary output of writers such as Charles Dickens, whose portrait he painted (in 1859), and Laurence Sterne. Frith started his career as a portrait painter and first exhibited at the British Institution in 1838. He moved to London in 1835 where he began his formal art studies at Sass's Academy in Charlotte Street, before attending the Royal Academy Schools. Frith was great uncle and an advisor to the English school portrait painter Henry Keyworth Raine (1872–1932). Frith was encouraged to take up art by his father, a hotelier in Harrogate. He had originally intended to be an auctioneer. William Powell Frith was born in Aldfield, near Ripon in the then West Riding of Yorkshire on 9 January 1819. He has been described as the "greatest British painter of the social scene since Hogarth". He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1853, presenting The Sleeping Model as his Diploma work. William Powell Frith RA (9 January 1819 – 2 November 1909) was an English painter specialising in genre subjects and panoramic narrative works of life in the Victorian era.
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