拍品專文
Frith's 'Many Happy Returns of the Day' (Harrogate Art Gallery) commemorates the birthday of his daughter Alice (later Lady Hastings). The setting is his own dining-room at 10 Pembridge Villas in Bayswater. Frith himself, very much the paterfamilias, sits at one end of the table, with his wife Isabelle opposite; also included are six more children (the Friths had married in 1845 and were to have twelve children in all), two grandparents, two older girls, one of whom may be a governess, and a female servant. The only sitter who was certainly not a member of Frith's household was the grandfather. Frith's father had died in 1837, so for this figure he used 'a man who had seen better days, and found refuge in the workhouse for his old age' (W.P. Frith, My Autobiography, I, 1887, p.263).
The picture appeared at the Royal Academy in 1856 (no. 131). Two years previously Frith had exhibited Life at the Seaside (Royal Collection), which had made his name and been bought by the Queen; two years later he would show the famous Derby Day (Tate Gallery), and in 1862 the almost equally celebrated Railway Station (Royal Holloway College). In his Academy Notes, Ruskin gave qualified praise to 'Many Happy Returns', describing it as 'a taking picture, much, it seems to me, above Mr Frith's former standard.' He told his readers to 'note the advancing Pre-Raphaelitism in the wreath of leaves round the child's head', and could not resist a characteristically moralising comment: 'One is only sorry to see any fair little child having too many and too kind friends, and in so great danger of being toasted, toyed, and wreathed into selfishness and misery.' These remarks enfuriated Frith, who had no use for Pre-Raphaelitism, and in his autobiography he went so far as to disparage the picture in order to take a swipe at Ruskin. 'Ruskin's works', he wrote, 'bristle with errors; one of his notable ones was his saying, on the discovery of a bit of what he took for Pre-Raphaelite work in one of the worst pictures I ever painted, that I was "at last in the right way," or words to that effect' (ibid, III, 1888, p.5). In fact 'Many Happy Returns' is generally regarded as one of Frith's most satisfactory works. Ruskin was by no means the only contemporary critic who praised it, while in recent times it has been much exhibited, as well as featuring in such books on Victorian genre as Graham Reynolds' Painters of the Victorian Scene (1953) and Christopher Wood's Victorian Panorama (1976). As Reynolds observes, 'it is a highly successful, unconventionally arranged family group and a fascinating glimpse into a mid-Victorian dining-room at meal-time.'
Both the freedom of the handling and some significant differences prove conclusively that the present version is a preliminary sketch for the picture rather than a reduced copy after it by the artist. It may in fact be referred to in Frith's autobiography (I, 1887, p.262). 'Towards the end of 1854', he wrote, 'I found myself preparing a sketch of a child's birthday. The scene is laid in a dining-room, where a family is assembled to do honour to a small person who may have attained the mature age of six, and is at the moment an object of attention to the whole party; for the ceremony of health-drinking is taking place.' The differences between the two versions offer many insights into the picture's development. In the picture, the grandmother who appears in the right foreground in the sketch is moved to the table. She takes the place of the girl to Mrs Frith's left, who now looks over her shoulder, and is replaced in the foreground by the grandfather whose introduction, as already noted, caused Frith to look outside his family for a model. This change in turn leads to others. In the sketch a little girl shows her grandmother a Noah's Ark, evidently a birthday present; in the painting, more appropriately, she offers her grandfather a glass of wine. However, to preserve the balance of ideas, the servant who, in the sketch, carries a tray of glasses, is given a pile of unopened presents in the picture. Meanwhile Frith makes a number of lesser adjustments in the interest of a harmonious and appealing composition. The pictures on the wall are centred more over the table, and their shapes broken up by lowering the chandelier. Mrs Frith and the grandmother both lose a few years; Frith himself gains a few and places his hand more naturally on the back of his son's chair. The servant is turned several degrees to round off the composition on the left, while the elder girl on the near side of the table is given a chair with a more elegantly curving back. No doubt Frith felt that the hard lines of this chair-back in the sketch clashed with the strong horizontal of the edge of the table.
The picture appeared at the Royal Academy in 1856 (no. 131). Two years previously Frith had exhibited Life at the Seaside (Royal Collection), which had made his name and been bought by the Queen; two years later he would show the famous Derby Day (Tate Gallery), and in 1862 the almost equally celebrated Railway Station (Royal Holloway College). In his Academy Notes, Ruskin gave qualified praise to 'Many Happy Returns', describing it as 'a taking picture, much, it seems to me, above Mr Frith's former standard.' He told his readers to 'note the advancing Pre-Raphaelitism in the wreath of leaves round the child's head', and could not resist a characteristically moralising comment: 'One is only sorry to see any fair little child having too many and too kind friends, and in so great danger of being toasted, toyed, and wreathed into selfishness and misery.' These remarks enfuriated Frith, who had no use for Pre-Raphaelitism, and in his autobiography he went so far as to disparage the picture in order to take a swipe at Ruskin. 'Ruskin's works', he wrote, 'bristle with errors; one of his notable ones was his saying, on the discovery of a bit of what he took for Pre-Raphaelite work in one of the worst pictures I ever painted, that I was "at last in the right way," or words to that effect' (ibid, III, 1888, p.5). In fact 'Many Happy Returns' is generally regarded as one of Frith's most satisfactory works. Ruskin was by no means the only contemporary critic who praised it, while in recent times it has been much exhibited, as well as featuring in such books on Victorian genre as Graham Reynolds' Painters of the Victorian Scene (1953) and Christopher Wood's Victorian Panorama (1976). As Reynolds observes, 'it is a highly successful, unconventionally arranged family group and a fascinating glimpse into a mid-Victorian dining-room at meal-time.'
Both the freedom of the handling and some significant differences prove conclusively that the present version is a preliminary sketch for the picture rather than a reduced copy after it by the artist. It may in fact be referred to in Frith's autobiography (I, 1887, p.262). 'Towards the end of 1854', he wrote, 'I found myself preparing a sketch of a child's birthday. The scene is laid in a dining-room, where a family is assembled to do honour to a small person who may have attained the mature age of six, and is at the moment an object of attention to the whole party; for the ceremony of health-drinking is taking place.' The differences between the two versions offer many insights into the picture's development. In the picture, the grandmother who appears in the right foreground in the sketch is moved to the table. She takes the place of the girl to Mrs Frith's left, who now looks over her shoulder, and is replaced in the foreground by the grandfather whose introduction, as already noted, caused Frith to look outside his family for a model. This change in turn leads to others. In the sketch a little girl shows her grandmother a Noah's Ark, evidently a birthday present; in the painting, more appropriately, she offers her grandfather a glass of wine. However, to preserve the balance of ideas, the servant who, in the sketch, carries a tray of glasses, is given a pile of unopened presents in the picture. Meanwhile Frith makes a number of lesser adjustments in the interest of a harmonious and appealing composition. The pictures on the wall are centred more over the table, and their shapes broken up by lowering the chandelier. Mrs Frith and the grandmother both lose a few years; Frith himself gains a few and places his hand more naturally on the back of his son's chair. The servant is turned several degrees to round off the composition on the left, while the elder girl on the near side of the table is given a chair with a more elegantly curving back. No doubt Frith felt that the hard lines of this chair-back in the sketch clashed with the strong horizontal of the edge of the table.