page_title: Victorian painting
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Victorian painting / Background
caption_attribution_description: This picture shows the Duke of Wellington offering a gift to Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and Prince Arthur, in a scene resembling the Adoration of the Magi. The painting was commissioned by Queen Victoria to commemorate the 1st of May 1851, which held a threefold significance: it was the first birthday of Prince Arthur, the eighty-second birthday of prince's godfather the Duke of Wellington, and the opening day of the Great Exhibition. Prince Arthur holds Lily-of-the-valley, a traditional 1st of May gift said to bring good luck. The Crystal Palace can be seen in the background.
context_page_description: Victorian painting refers to the distinctive styles of painting in the United Kingdom during the reign of Queen Victoria. Victoria's early reign was characterised by rapid industrial development and social and political change, which made the United Kingdom one of the most powerful and advanced nations in the world. Painting in the early years of her reign was dominated by the Royal Academy of Arts and by the theories of its first president, Joshua Reynolds. Reynolds and the academy were strongly influenced by the Italian Renaissance painter Raphael, and believed that it was the role of an artist to make the subject of their work appear as noble and idealised as possible. This had proved a successful approach for artists in the pre-industrial period, where the main subjects of artistic commissions were portraits of the nobility and military and historical scenes. By the time of Victoria's accession to the throne this approach was coming to be seen as stale and outdated.
context_section_description: When the 18-year-old Alexandrina Victoria inherited the throne of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland as Queen Victoria in 1837, the country had enjoyed unbroken peace since the final victory over Napoleon in 1815. In 1832 the Representation of the People Act (commonly known as the Reform Act) and its equivalents in Scotland and Ireland had abolished many of the corrupt practices of the British political system, giving the country a stable and relatively representative government. The Industrial Revolution was underway, and in 1838 the London and Birmingham Railway opened, linking the industrial north of England to the cities and ports of the south; by 1850 over 6,200 miles (10,000 km) of railways were in place and Britain's transformation into an industrial superpower was complete. The perceived triumph of technology, progress and peaceful trade was celebrated in the 1851 Great Exhibition, organised by Victoria's husband Albert, which attracted over 40,000 visitors per day to view the over 100,000 exhibits of manufacturing, farming and engineering on display.
  While Britain's economy had traditionally been dominated by the landowning aristocracy of the countryside, the Industrial Revolution and political reforms had greatly reduced their influence, and created a booming middle class of merchants, manufacturers and engineers in London and the industrial cities of the north. The newly rich were generally keen to show off their affluence through the display of art, and rich enough to pay high prices for art works, but generally had little interest in the old masters, preferring modern works by local artists. In 1844 Parliament ruled art unions legal, which commissioned artworks by famous artists, paying for them by means of a lottery in which the finished artwork was the prize; this not only offered an entrance to the art world for people who may not have been able to afford to buy a significant painting, but stimulated a growing market for prints.
caption: The First of May, 1851 by Franz Xaver Winterhalter was intended to symbolise the age. Winterhalter painted in the manner promoted by Joshua Reynolds and based on the style of Raphael, in which the artist consciously idealises the subject of the work.[2] The painting shows the 82nd birthday of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (born 1 May 1769), whose military victories were felt to have secured the stability and prosperity of the United Kingdom, and who as Prime Minister had attended the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, at this time considered one of the key turning points of the Industrial Revolution. Wellington presents a casket to his godson Prince Arthur, seventh child of Victoria and Albert (born 1 May 1850), on his first birthday, and receives a nosegay from Arthur in return.[B] Albert is distracted from the scene by the sun rising over the Crystal Palace and the Great Exhibition, organised by Albert, which opened on 1 May 1851 and symbolised the strength of British technology and innovation and the belief that technology would lead to a great future.[4]
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