William Harcourt; behind and to the left of Northcote is Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster John Bright. The paintings on the wall accurately reproduce the exhibits at the 1881 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. A second portrait of Disraeli is visible on the wall behind Langtry. On the wall at the right, above Wilde's opponents, is the similarly angry-looking central figure in John Collier's Last Voyage of Henry Hudson. Millais at the extreme right is looking at Lawrence Alma-Tadema's painting Sappho and Alcaeus, accompanied by a myopic connoisseur. On the left wall are Heywood Hardy's Sidi Ahmed ben Avuda and the Holy Lion to the left; James Sant's Daughters of Arthur Wilson, Esq. further right, and John William Waterhouse's A Summer's Day in Italy. Sale The work remained in the Pope family until it was sold at Martin Beisly Fine Art in April 2019. Exhibition history The painting has been exhibited several times: Royal Academy, 1883, no.163. Harrogate, Messre A. and J. Polak's Vine Villa, presented by Dickinson's of London, September 1883. Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1951, no. 44, lent by Major A. Rolph Pope. Royal Academy Exhibition, Winter 1956–7, no. 447, lent by A.C.R. Pope. Royal Academy Bicentenary 1968–9, not 449, lent by A.C.R. Pope. London, Leighton House, on Loan 2002–2008. Guildhall Art Gallery and Harrogate, Mercer Art Gallery, William Powell Frith: Painting the Victorian Age, 2006, unnumbered. The Watts Gallery, Liberating Fashion: Aesthetic Dress in Victorian Portraits, February-June 2015 Royal Academy, on loan 2015–2018. Royal Academy, The Great Spectacle, 250 Years of the Summer Exhibition, June-August 2018, no. 3. Influences Frith was inspired by the satirical cartoons of George du Maurier (whose head is visible between the orange and green attired aesthetes at the left) and by Gilbert and Sullivan's popular operetta Patience, first performed in 1881. The aesthetic costumes are characterised by features such as gigot sleeves and the "Watteau pleats" seen in the figure to the left of Wilde, wearing pink. The women in the centre along with the one to the right of Wilde with the child represent normal fashionable clothing of the day. These aspects of dress and pose, along with the myopic figure next to Millais, show the influence of Watteau's 1720-21 painting L'Enseigne de Gersaint. In Harrogate A Private View was exhibited on tour. At Harrogate, North Yorkshire, Frith's childhood home, it went on show at Messrs A & J Polak's, with visitors