Mr Honeywood Introduces the Bailiffs to Miss Richland as his Friends

William Powell Frith's Mr. Honeywood Introduces the Bailiffs to Miss Richland as his Friends, painted in 1850, illustrates a comic scene from Oliver Goldsmith's play The Good-Natured Man of 1768, in which the generous but imprudent Honeywood attempts to conceal his financial embarrassment from the woman he loves by passing off the debt collectors who have arrived to arrest him as social visitors. Goldsmith's comedy was widely read and staged in Victorian Britain, its themes of benevolent folly and the comedy of social embarrassment having lost none of their currency. Frith was by 1850 consolidating his reputation as one of the finest painters of literary comedy in Britain, and subjects like this — where the humor depends on the gap between social pretension and visible reality — suited his gifts for expressive characterization perfectly.

The comedy is performed entirely through body language and facial expression: Honeywood's forced nonchalance, the bailiffs' awkward attempts to play their unaccustomed social role, Miss Richland's puzzled scrutiny. Frith stages the scene with theatrical precision. The handling is polished and smooth, the period costuming detailed and historically accurate.