At the Opera (Frith)

At the Opera is an oil on canvas painting by the British artist William Powell Frith, from 1855. It is held at the Harris Museum, in Preston.

At the Opera
Artist	William Powell Frith
Year	1855
Type	Oil on canvas, genre painting
Dimensions	34.9 cm × 45 cm (13.7 in × 18 in)
Location	Harris Museum, Preston

Description

It depicts a young woman seated in box in an opera house, with a wrap around her shoulders and clutching a pair of opera glasses. Rather than a portrait painting, it depicts an artist's model as a generalised type of fashionable beauty of the Victorian era.^[1] The picture was admired by Prince Albert.^[2]

Although Frith became known for his large, bustling scenes of everyday life such as The Derby Day and The Railway Station he also produced many smaller, more intimate works such as this. The picture was displayed at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1855 in London^[3] Today the painting is in the collection of the Harris Museum of Preston in Lancashire, having been donated in 1883 by the Preston-born lawyer Richard Newsham.^[4]