The Clique - Definition and Overview

The Clique was a group of Victorian artists founded by Richard Dadd. Its other members were Augustus Egg, Alfred Elmore, William Powell Frith, Henry Nelson O'Neil, John Phillip and Edward Matthew Ward. They met together at the end of the 1830s and early 1840s. The group broke up in 1843 when Dadd became insane and was incarcerated after murdering his father. The others all became successful members of the Royal Academy of Arts. Their work was supported by the newly-founded Art Journal.

The Clique was characterised by their rejection of academic high art in favour of genre painting, following the precedents of William Hogarth and David Wilkie. At their meetings they would all produce drawings on the same subject and ask non-artists to judge the merits of the works. This was in line with their view that art should be judged by the public, not by its conformity to academic ideals.

In the 1850s most members of The Clique became inveterate enemies of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, believing their art to be wilfully eccentric and primitivist. Frith and O'Neil wrote many attacks on Pre-Raphaelite principles. However Egg became a friend and supporter of William Holman Hunt.

Portraits of members of The Clique were commissioned by Patrick Allan-Fraser for Hospitalfield House in Arbroath.

In the 1860s another group of artists with similar ideas became known as the St. John's Wood Clique.