3-038-970 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

W. E. Frost, Esq. R.A., 1871. Engraving from a photograph by John Watkins. 'The election of Mr. Frost to full membership of the Royal Academy may have been a surprise to some who forget that the artist, early in his career, fairly and fully established a claim to the higher honour the Academy has to bestow. That he had to wait an almost unprecedented length of time for this distinction was his misfortune, but did not diminish his right. Moreover, his successes were won in a walk of art which it is one of the first duties of academies to foster and encourage. The public may care little for mythological and allegorical themes; but without ideal aims, generic treatment, and study of beauty and grace in its highest expression in the female form, a school will inevitably sink into prosaic degradation. To be condemned for five-and-twenty years to the "Limbo," as it is called, and the "Limbo of forgetfulness," as it often proves, of the Associateship - that is, to a position of certified inferiority - for veterans to see young men passed quickly over them, and hope deferred, year after year, is sufficient to damp the ardour of the most sanguine and to discourage the stoutest heart'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.