This artwork is one of the top 20 UK railway artworks voted for by the public as part of Railway 200.
'The most important painting ever made of the mid-Victorian urban milieu'. This is how art historian Mary Cowling describes The Railway Station, William Powell Frith's extraordinary panorama of 1862, now in the collection at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Bringing the Victorian city to life in all its grit and glory, Frith's famous oil painting captures the scene inside Paddington station as a crowd surround a train that prepares to depart. The painting caused a sensation when it was presented to Victorian public it depicts, and it is still a familiar image today.
Capturing the crowd
Earlier on in his career Frith had favoured historical and literary themes, but this all changed in the 1850s when he switched his focus to contemporary scenes. 'Weary of costume painting', he said, 'I had determined to try my hand at modern life, with all its drawbacks.' His first work in this new direction was Life at the Seaside of 1854, inspired by a holiday to Ramsgate. The artist later said he was interested in 'the variety of character' on display, adding 'all sorts and conditions of men and women were there.'
His painting, reflecting real life rather than idealising it, scandalised some snootier critics – one called it 'a piece of vulgar cockney business'. Nevertheless, when Life at the Seaside was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1854, it proved immensely popular, even impressing Queen Victoria who purchased the painting. Though the original still resides in the Royal Collection, Frith went on to paint a number of copies in the years that followed.
His next attempt at a scene from modern life was even more ambitious. This was The Derby Day, finished in 1858 and widely considered to be Frith's masterpiece.
Offering a panoramic view of the Epsom Derby captured in exquisite detail, this 88 inch-long painting presents us with all elements of Victorian society. We see city swells, swindlers and servants – a flower seller, a fortune teller, a soldier. It is an astonishing work comprising many narrative vignettes designed to be 'read' by a viewer: pick-pockets work a crowd distracted by acrobats, a wife pulls her husband away from the gambling, an elderly couple are shocked by the boisterous scene.
Unsurprisingly, the painting was a smash hit at the Royal Academy where barriers had to be erected to control the crowds who turned up to see it. How would Frith match this success?
A commercial endeavour?
For his next panorama Frith would look to the railway. This time he turned his attention to London's Paddington Station, completed just a decade earlier and built by the great Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
This was a clever but daring subject. Perhaps more than any other aspect of Victorian life, rail travel was a motif of modernity. It had transformed the country, altering perceptions of time and distance and – as Mary Cowling has pointed out – facilitating exactly the sort of large gatherings that Frith had already captured so memorably in his paintings of Ramsgate and the Epsom Derby.
But the subject was not without risk, as Frith recognised. In his memoirs, he said: 'I don't think the station at Paddington can be called picturesque, nor can the clothes of the ordinary traveller be said to offer much attraction to the painter – in short, the difficulties of the subject were very great; and many were the warnings of my friends.'
Frith was not the first to take modern travel as his theme. Other artists had captured scenes inside trains and omnibuses, with such pictures appealing to the burgeoning middle classes they often portrayed.
To Brighton and Back for Three and Sixpence
1859
Charles Rossiter (1827–1897) 
Travel certainly offered artists great narrative possibility, with the diverse mix of people it threw together and the opportunities it presented to portray encounter, separation, movement and humour. But as Frith recognised – perhaps with earlier attacks on the 'vulgarity' of his crowds in mind – there were also risks to presenting such a gritty modern scene.
The artist was surely reassured when the art dealer Louis Victor Flatlow offered him a record sum for the painting after seeing his initial sketch for The Railway Station. Realising the commercial value of Frith's panoramas, Flatlow paid Frith the highest ever sum paid to an artist for a single artwork. In return, he would own the preliminary sketches, the final painting, reproduction rights and exhibition rights. As we will see, this was a very smart investment.
Preparing The Railway Station
As you might expect for such a richly detailed, realist painting, Frith worked closely from life and many of his models have been identified. The two policemen who apprehend a swindler to the right of the canvas were based on Haydon and Brett, two real-life detectives recruited by the artist. Frith later said they were 'admirable sitters'.
Sketch for 'The Railway Station'
c.1860
William Powell Frith (1819–1909) 
Meanwhile, the foreign visitor being hassled by a cab driver was modelled by a Venetian man who taught Frith's daughters Italian. Frith placed himself in the painting, too, alongside his young family – in one episode, his wife can be seen kissing their apprehensive young son who is going off to boarding school, while Frith has his hand on their elder son's shoulder just behind. His patron Flatlow also appears as an older gentleman in the background, talking to the train driver.
Elsewhere in the painting we see many other dramas taking place. A well-dressed woman has been caught trying to smuggle her small dog onto the train, while a young bride bids a tearful farewell to her bridesmaids as she sets of with her proud new husband.
A departing sailor says an emotional goodbye to his wife, while a gentleman who finds himself in reduced circumstances waves off his daughter who has been forced to find a job – perhaps as a governess.
A group of young men head off on a fishing trip, while a lady fusses over her luggage and a harassed woman runs towards the train with her children – they are running late.
Exhibition
These rich layers of detail and narrative reward a lengthy look – the more you study the painting, the more you notice. This was certainly appreciated by the crowds who flocked to see it when it was unveiled in 1862. The savvy Flatlow had ensured that the painting would not be displayed at the Royal Academy as might have been expected. Instead, he exhibited it all on its own, in a small gallery next to London's Haymarket Theatre, where visitors could view it for one shilling. A pamphlet was produced to help explain the picture's many details.
As Nancy Rose Marshall has pointed out, this type of exhibition meant that the painting 'was not subject to a preliminary assessment by the elite art world but rather put directly before the public, who literally bought into it and made it possible through their financial support' – they were able to buy prints of the painting by subscription, therefore becoming, as one newspaper noted, Frith's 'true patrons'.
83,000 people came to see the painting in London before it toured the country and finally set off for exhibitions in Philadelphia and Paris, where it met with similar popular success.
It was the painting's popularity which some sniffy critics found difficult to stomach. Writing in the London Review, one said: 'Mr Frith's picture is really a poor affair... popular as is the subject, popular the artist, and popularity-hunting the devices which have been and will be adopted to make the work a "screaming success" – screaming as a railway whistle.' Other critics similarly saw its popularity as lowbrow, appealing to the masses rather than more refined tastes. Frith was unconcerned by this criticism, later recalling 'The critics contradicted one another as usual, without doing good or harm to me or the picture.'
Legacy
The Railway Station, like Frith's other crowd scenes, provided inspiration for later artists. Mary Cowling has identified his influence on John Ritchie, George Elgar Hicks and Phoebus Levin, who all painted panoramic crowd scenes, often set in London.
Frith went on to capture further crowd scenes himself, most notably his memorable painting of a private view at the Royal Academy, which incorporates portraits of many notables – from Gladstone to Oscar Wilde.
Henry Jamyn Brooks (1839–1925) 
Frith also made copies of the work himself, including this one in Leicester Museum & Art Gallery.
Today, Frith's virtuosic panoramas are valuable because they capture slices of Victorian city life that might otherwise be lost. The tiny details of dress, the modes of transport, the fleeting encounters, the undercurrents of class, the many varieties of entertainment. But despite these glimpses of things that have been lost, Frith also captures something that endures.
Passing through Paddington station is a very different experience today, but we still see teary farewells, harassed parents, patrolling police officers, spilled luggage. As the railways continue to expand – Paddington recently welcomed a new Elizabeth Line station – we, like the Victorians, see urban crowds growing and our cityscape changing because of new technology and modes of transport. The changes that Frith shows us in his painting continue to unfold.
Anna Maria Barry, writer
This content was funded by Railway 200
Further reading
Mary Cowling, Victorian Figurative Painting: Domestic Life and the Contemporary Social Scene (London: Andreas Papadakis Publisher, 2000)
William Powell Frith, My Autobiography and Reminiscences, Vol I (London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1887)
Nancy Rose Marshall, ‘On William Powell Frith’s Railway Station, April 1862’, BRANCH: Britain, Representation and Nineteenth-Century History, Extension of Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net
William Powell Frith, ‘The Railway Station’, Royal Collection Trust website
About Railway 200
Railway 200 is a cross-industry, UK Government-backed, partner-led celebration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of the modern railway, commemorating the opening by George Stephenson of the Stockton and Darlington Railway in the North East of England in 1825, a journey that changed the world forever. It explores the past, present and future of rail, and how it has shaped our lives and livelihoods. Numerous activities and events are planned throughout 2025, many of which are listed at www.railway200.co.uk
