Claude Duval (painting)

Claude Duval
ArtistWilliam Powell Frith
Year1860
TypeOil on canvas, history painting
Dimensions108.8 cm × 153 cm (42.8 in × 60 in)
LocationManchester Art Gallery, Manchester

Claude Duval is an 1860 history painting by the British artist William Powell Frith. It depicts the French highwaymen Claude Duval who operated in Restoration England. He is shown holding up a coach on a heath.

The story is taken from The History of England by Thomas Babington Macaulay.[1] Frith began making sketches for it while he was on holiday in Weymouth in 1858. The central female character depicted is Lady Aurora Sydney.[2] Reputedly Duval gallantly asked her to dance the coranto rather than rob her.[3]

Frith exhibited it at the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition in 1860. The painting is now in the collection of the Manchester Art Gallery.[4] The engraver Lumb Stocks produced a print based on the painting, and presented it to the Royal Academy when he was elected in 1871.[5]

References

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Bibliography

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  • Green, Richard & Sellars, Jane. William Powell Frith: The People's Painter. Bloomsbury, 2019.
  • Noakes, Aubrey. William Frith, Extraordinary Victorian Painter. Jupiter, 1978.
  • Richards, Jeffrey. Swordsmen of the Screen: From Douglas Fairbanks to Michael York. Routledge, 2014.
  • Trotter, David. William Powell Frith: Painting the Victorian Age. Yale University Press, 2006
  • Wood, Christopher. William Powell Frith: A Painter and His World. Sutton Publishing, 2006.