Royal Academy Exhibition of 1878

And When Did You Last See Your Father? by William Frederick Yeames

The Royal Academy Exhibition of 1878 was the an art exhibition held at Burlington House in Piccadilly. The annual Summer Exhibition of the British Royal Academy of Arts, it ran from 6 May to 5 August and attracted more than 300,000 spectators. The exhibition was in completion with one run by the new Grosvenor Gallery, with the writer Henry James preferring the latter.

Major attractions included William Powell Frith's The Road to Ruin, a series of five paintings in homage to William Hogarth and William Frederick Yeames' history painting, When Did You Last See Your Father?. John Everett Millais displayed his own historical scene The Princes in the Tower, but it was his depiction of the celebrated actress Lillie Langtry in his portrait A Jersey Lily that drew huge crowds. Edward Poynter, who would later succeed Millais as President of the Royal Academy, submitted his own portrait featuring Langtry.

Poynter's other painting Zenobia Captive earned enthusiastic praise from critics. The American artist Winslow Homer's The Cotton Pickers was displayed by its owner.

Gallery

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  The Princes in the Tower by John Everett Millais
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  A Jersey Lily by John Everett Millais
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  Girl Reading by Charles Edward Perugini
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  Lillie Langtry by Edward Poynter
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  Zenobia Captive by Edward Poynter
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  The Hour by John Pettie
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  Meeting of Scottish Jacobites by Claude Andrew Calthrop
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  The Cotton Pickers by Winslow Homer
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  Winding the Skein by Frederic Leighton
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  Nausicaa by Frederic Leighton
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  A Sculptor's Model by Lawrence Alma-Tadema
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  Afternoon on the Cliffs by Henry William Banks Davis
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  Evening Light by Henry William Banks Davis
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  A Dutch Galliot Aground on a Sandbank on the Biesbosch by Edward William Cooke
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  The Cleopatra in the Bay of Biscay by Edward William Cooke
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  The Post Bag by Marcus Stone
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  The Waning Honeymoon by George Henry Boughton
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  Dante and the Leopard by John Macallan Swan
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  A Cabbage Garden by Arthur Melville
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  John Alden and Priscilla by Alfred Elmore
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  Wellington's March from Quatre Bras to Waterloo by Ernest Crofts
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  Autumn in Switzerland by Benjamin Williams Leader
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  Saint Martin's Summer by John Everett Millais
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  Wine Cart, the Roman Campagna by Charles H. Poingdestre
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  After an Entomological Sale by Edward Armitage
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  The Cities of the Plain by Edward Armitage
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  David, the Future King of Israel, While a Shepherd at Bethlehem by John Rogers Herbert
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  Wandering Shadows by Peter Graham
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  The Gods and Their Makers by Edwin Long
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  Pompeii, A.D. 79 by Alfred Elmore
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  A Social Eddy by William Quiller Orchardson
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  News from the Front, by Andrew Carrick Gow
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  The Convent Garden by Francis S. Walker
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  Uncertainty by Arthur Hughes
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  An Anxious Moment by Briton Riviere
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  Sympathy by Briton Riviere
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  Newgate, Committed for Trial by Frank Holl
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  Ebbing Tide by Colin Hunter
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  Goodbye by Tito Conti
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  Britomart and Her Nurse by George Frederic Watts
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  The First Communion, Dieppe by Philip Richard Morris
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  The Missing Boat by Erskine Nicol
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  Halt of Prince Charles Edward on the Banks of the Nairne by Richard Beavis
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  The Remorse of the Emperor Nero after the Murder of his Mother by John William Waterhouse
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  A Flaw in the Title by Edmund Leighton
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  The House of Commons by William Morrison Wyllie
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  Eventide: A Scene in the Westminster Union by Hubert von Herkomer
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  Reaping Time by George Bernard O'Neill
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  The Laird by John Pettie
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  The Raid of Ruthven by William Baxter Collier Fyfe
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  Martaba, a Kashmiree Nautch girl by Valentine Cameron Prinsep
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  Florence by Stanhope Forbes
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  Mabel and Ruth Orrinsmith by Arthur Hughes
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  John Collingwood Bruce by Rudolf Lehmann
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  Jacques Blumenthal by George Frederic Watts
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  Smith Taylor Whitehead by John Pettie
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  James Bain by Daniel Macnee
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  John Hutton Balfour by Daniel Macnee
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  George Gilbert Scott by George Richmond
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  William Shaen by Henry Tanworth Wells
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  George Fownes-Luttrell by Cyrus Johnson
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  Earl of Shaftesbury by John Everett Millais
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  Earl of Shaftesbury by John Collier
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  Henry Irving as Richard, Duke of Gloucester by Edwin Long

Bibliography

• Aruz, Joan (ed.) Palmyra: Mirage in the Desert. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018.
• Bills, Mark & Knight, Vivien (ed.) William Powell Frith: Painting the Victorian Age. Yale University Press, 2006
• Green, Richard & Sellars, Jane. William Powell Frith: The People's Painter. Bloomsbury, 2019.
• Herdrich, Stephanie L., Yount, Sylvia, Immerwahr, Daniel, Riopelle, Christopher & Shaw, Gwendolyn DuBois. Winslow Homer: Crosscurrents. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2022.