The Fair Toxophilites is an 1872 oil painting by the British artist William Powell Frith depicting three young women practicing archery.Cohen p.33 It also known by the title English Archers, Nineteenth Century. Today the painting is in the collection of the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, in Exeter.Royal Albert Memorial Museum
The three women portrayed were Frith's daughters Alice, Fanny and Louise. They are all dressed in a very fashionable way, reflecting their upper class status. It reflects the Victorian era archery craze, referred to in the novel Daniel Deronda by George Eliot.Rogers p.400Wood p.157 Frith exhibited it at the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition of 1873 alongside another featuring women playing billiards. The review in The Athenaeum, which was generally hostile to Frith's work, was critical. A more positive reception came from The Art Journal and The Times.Wood p. 157-59
References
Bibliography Bills, Mark & Knight, Vivien (ed.) William Powell Frith: Painting the Victorian Age. Yale University Press, 2006 Cohen, Michael. Sisters: Relation and Rescue in Nineteenth-century British Novels and Paintings. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1995. Green, Richard & Sellars, Jane. William Powell Frith: The People's Painter. Bloomsbury, 2019. Rogers, Pat (ed.) The Oxford Illustrated History of English Literature. Oxford University Press, 2001. Wood, Christopher. William Powell Frith: A Painter and His World. Sutton Publishing, 2006.