Royal Academy Exhibition of 1881

A Private View at the Royal Academy, 1881 by William Powell Frith

The Royal Academy Exhibition of 1881 was the hundred and thirteenth annual Summer Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts. It was held from 2 May to 1 August 1881 at Burlington House in Piccadilly, attracting 344,000 visitors during its run. [1]

The exhibition is best known through William Powell Frith's painting A Private View at the Royal Academy, 1881 which was produced two years later and featured at the 1883 exhibition. It shows fashionable society figures mingling in front of the walls hung with that year's submissions.

Academic art was represented in a number of paintings. Edwin Long's Diana or Christ? featured a scene in Ancient Rome. [2] Also featured were A Roman Holiday by Briton Rivière, Winter Quarters by Frank Paton, The Symbol by Frank Dicksee and The Battle of Kandahar by Richard Caron Woodville.[3] James Tissot displayed Quiet and Goodbye on the Mersey.[4]

The exhibition faced completion elsewhere with the rival show at the Grosvenor Gallery featuring prominent works while Elizabeth Thompson's submission to the Royal Academy The Defence of Rorke's Drift was overshadowed by her Scotland Forever! on display at the nearby Egyptian Hall.[5]

References

Bibliography

  • Marshall, Nancy Rose & Warner, Malcolm. James Tissot: Victorian Life, Modern Love. Yale University Press, 1999.
  • Ravenscroft, Ruth Jackson & Goldhill, Simon. Victorian Engagements with the Bible and Antiquity: The Shock of the Old. Cambridge University Press, 2023.
  • Smith, Alison. The Victorian Nude: Sexuality, Morality, and Art. Manchester University Press, 1996.
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