Fashion Note

Queen Victoria, and most of her subjects, regarded William Powell Frith as a great artist. His work had a whale of a lot of work in it, and that seemed a good thing to the Victorian eye. Frith spent two busy years on his 3-ft.-by-7-ft. Derby Day, crammed the canvas with 3,000 spectators: a happy, seething mob of dandies, shell-game sharpers, yokels, gypsies, fine ladies, jockeys, kids and carnival performers on the green grass of Epsom Downs, under a smiling summer sky. The Royal Academy voted it "Picture of the Year" in 1858, and London's National Gallery hung it in a place of honor. For decades, Derby Day was railed off to protect it from the crush, and a bobby stood constant guard near by.

With the intelligentsia, the picture was not universally popular. When Oscar Wilde saw it, he asked coolly: "Was it all done by hand?"

Recent reactions to Derby Day have been as negative as Wilde's. A year ago, the picture was demoted to a dark corner of the National Gallery's canteen; only a handful of sentimental oldtimers objected. Last week the painting was banished to the vaults. Its disappearance was little noted. London's Evening Standard fetched a mild editorial sigh: "Many people, of course, maintain that this is not a 'good picture.' But it is, at least, a sort of institution, and a very English affair at that."

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