The Clique

The Clique was an informal society formed around 1837 by a group of friends during their studies at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Its members—the young artists Richard Dadd, William Powell Frith, Augustus Leopold Egg, John Phillip, Henry Nelson O'Neil, and Edward Matthew Ward—met regularly in the evenings to draw on set literary or historical themes and then jointly discussed and criticised one another's work. They admired the genre and everyday painting of David Wilkie and illustrative subjects from Shakespeare, Walter Scott, and Byron, while rejecting the grand historical manner promoted by the academy. Most members of the Clique went on to successful careers: Frith became famous for his crowded panoramas of Victorian life, while the tragic fate of Richard Dadd—who, owing to mental illness, created his fantastical masterpieces in an asylum—lent the group a special aura. The society remains a notable episode of British art on the eve of the Pre-Raphaelites.