FROST, William Edward - b. 1810 London, d. 1877 London

English painter, a follower of William Etty, and like him, was one of the few painters in England to dedicate himself to the nude. He was encouraged by his parents to take up painting after showing an early talent for art. He was put to study under a local artist, a Miss Evatt, and at age 15 was introduced to Etty, by whose advice he was sent to Sass’s School in Bloomsbury. After three years there, he entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1829.

He established himself as a portrait painter, working at a pace that gave rise to some 300 completed pictures over the next 14 years. It was only in 1843 that he first started to exhibit the figural compositions that were to dominate his art henceforth. In that year he showed a Bacchanalian Dance, following this successful picture with a range of nymphs, sirens, goddesses - anything without clothes. The scale was from large, crowded narrative pictures - Chastity, Pan and Dancing Nymphs etc - through to miniatures, of which he painted a large number. In 1845 he painted a Sabrina, which when exhibited at the Royal Academy gave rise to extreme approval, and he was elected Associate of the Royal Academy in the following year, as well as winning the patronage of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

Despite the general prudishness and sexual repression of the Victorian era, Frost’s relatively chaste nudes were popular, and his career was financially successful. Frost’s creations became extremely popular in the form of prints and engravings, and some of them were reproduced in this way many times.

He was elected full Academician only in 1871.

L'Allegro

The painting was inspired by lines 11—16 of the poem L’Allegro by John Milton. It was written in conjunction with Il Penseroso, and both poems explore contrasting themes that had been essayed by neo-Platonists during the Renaissance: the former describing the active life and the latter the contemplative. L’Allegro and Il Penseroso date from about 1630 and are in Milton’s early lyrical style. Themes from John Milton’s oeuvre achieved great popularity during the nineteenth century. They exerted a particular fascination for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

The painting was commissioned by Queen Victoria on the basis of a larger picture entitled Euphrosyne, which had been exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1848. The composition is not an exact replica of the larger painting and only repeats the central group. It was intended as a birthday present for Prince Albert on 26 August 1848.