Frederick Thomas Charles Underhill 1847-1897

Beach scenes were incredibly popular with Victorian artists and collectors, particularly after the exhibition of William Powell Frith's famous picture of Ramsgate Sands in 1854 which was bought by Queen Victoria. With the development of the railways, seaside resorts largely superseded the inland spas so popular in the Eighteenth Century, for family holidays and day trips. Artists such as William Hopkins, Arthur Boyd Houghton and and Charles Wynne Nichols produced charming seaside scenes of families enjoying the pleasures of the shore and the present lot is equally examplary of the fashion for such pictures. The one constant which connects most of the Victorian images of beach life, was the depiction of animated jollity and human interaction as the families convivially socialised together on the at time over-crowded beaches of Bournemouth, Scarborough or Ramsgate. Underhill captured the epitome of the Victorian social scene in a painting which is so evocative of Nineteenth Century holidays in which crinolines and sailor suits were worn on the beach and rides on donkeys and making sandcastles were the past-times of children. 

Frederick Charles Underhill was born in Birmingham and lived in North London, specialising in scenes of Victorian genre and biblical subjects, with a particular interest in beach scenes. In 1862 he exhibited On the Sands at the Royal Academy with two other genre pictures which were so popular that he was able to move from Camden Street to the more sophisticated Kentish Town in 1863.