A Private View at the Royal Academy, 1881, (2 February 1885). Photogravure after a painting by William Powell Frith, depicting the opening of the Royal Academy 1881 Summer Exhibition at Burlington House in London. Frith wrote: "Beyond the desire of recording for posterity the aesthetic craze as regards dress, I wished to hit the folly of listening to self-elected critics in matters of taste, whether in dress or art. I therefore planned a group, consisting of a well-known apostle of the beautiful [ie Oscar Wilde], with a herd of eager worshippers surrounding him". Apart from Wilde, other famous figures include writers, artists, actors, clerics and politicians: Angela Burdett-Coutts, Philip Calderon, Henry Stacy Marks, Joseph Boehm, G.A. Sala, Henry Irving, Ellen Terry, Frederick A. Eaton, Lillie Langtry, William Agnew, Sir John Coleridge, Frederic Leighton, Gwladys Robinson, Sir Henry Thompson, Lady Diana de Vere Beauclerk, John Walker Huddleston, Robert Browning, Thomas Henry Huxley, Anthony Trollope, George du Maurier, John Tenniel, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Julius Benedict, William Ewart Gladstone, Sir Stafford Northcote, Sir William Harcourt, John Bright, John Everett Millais and Archbishop of York William Thomson.