The Fair Toxophilites, William Powell Frith

The Fair Toxophilites (or English Archers,Nineteenth Century), William Powell Frith

Study of three young lady archers: centre, the key figure is drawing her bow ready to shoot (from right to left). Beside her, right, two further figures: one holds a second bow, the other a pink parasol. The whole set against a landscape with a red brick house in the distance.
William Frith’s handsome young lady archers inhabit both a private and public pictorial world. Privately, English Archers, Nineteenth Century was created as a fanciful representation of the artist’s three daughters, Alice, Fanny and Louisa (left to right). Above all, the painting must have been valued as a novel family portrait and remained, rarely exhibited, with Frith’s descendants until acquired by the Museum. In the public sphere The Fair Toxophilites has become one of the most famous images of affluent Victorian leisure.