page_title: The Derby Day
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: The Derby Day / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: Ramsgate Sands by William Powell Frith
context_page_description: The Derby Day is a large oil painting showing a panoramic view of The Derby, painted by William Powell Frith over 15 months from 1856 to 1858. It has been described by Christie's as Frith's "undisputed masterpiece" and also "arguably the definitive example of Victorian modern-life genre".
  The original version is in Tate Britain in London. As with many of Frith's works, he painted a second version many years later, which is now in the Manchester Art Gallery. A much smaller but well-finished oil study was sold in 2011.
context_section_description: After the success of his earlier work, Life at the Seaside (also known as Ramsgate Sands), Frith was keen to find another contemporary piece. He visited Epsom in May 1856 with Augustus Egg and made an initial sketch. Frith was commissioned to paint a five- or six-foot canvas by the chemist Jacob Bell, for a fee of £1,500. He also sold the right to sell copies of the painting, and one of his studies, to art dealer Ernest Gambart for another £1,500. The work took nearly two years to complete, with different arrangements tried out on two large sketches and a further visit to the racecourse before the large work was completed.
  Frith used many live models for the painted figures, but also drew inspiration from photographs of Epsom racecourse and of groups of people. He hired an acrobat and his son from a pantomime in Drury Lane, and a jockey named Bundy, and commissioned Robert Howlett to take photographs of unusual groups of people. The 1896 edition of the boys' annual Chums includes an anecdote (page 117) about the boy acrobat who sat as a model for Frith:  "This youth had a kind of idea that sitting meant turning head over heels; and every now and then Mr. Frith had to stop him from actually turning a somersault among his casts and drapery."  The Chums article also relates how the young boy was impressed with the lavatory in Frith's house, exclaiming to his father: "Oh, father, such a beautiful place – all mahoginy (sic) and a chany (sic) basin to wash in."
caption: Life at the Seaside (also known as Ramsgate Sands)
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