William Powell Frith, R.A.

Sale: Christie's, South Kensington, 9 March 1995, lot 248
Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

Frith painted several series of lovers depicting a kneeling gentleman wooing a seated lady, most famously in his painting of Shelley and Mary Godwin. Later in life, at the age of seventy-nine, Frith embarked on another of these series around the subject of a proposal. Began in 1898 they culminated in a large work, In the conservatory: A Critical Moment, exhibited at the 1902 Royal Academy Exhibition (no. 172). This is the first study for the series, and the freshest and brightest. Another study, also from 1898 and the same size, is much darker in finish (Christie’s, London, 20 June 2013, lot 75 as The Proposal). A photograph from Black & White Royal Academy and New Gallery Pictures for 1902 shows Frith at work on his Academy version of this painting.