The Fair Toxophilites, also known as English Archers, Nineteenth Century,^[1][a]Toxophily is a late-19th century term for the “practice of, or addiction to, archery”.^[2] is an 1872 oil painting by the English artist William Powell Frith, depicting three young women practising archery. They are Frith’s fashionably dressed daughters Alice, Fanny and Louise, and reflect the Victorian-era craze for archery, referred to in the novel Daniel Deronda by George Eliot.^[3][4]

Frith exhibited the painting at the 1873 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, along with another feauturing women playing billiards. A review in The Athenaeum was critical of the work, but those in The Art Journal and The Times were were more positive.^[5]

The painting was purchased by the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, in Exeter, with support from the V&A Purchase Grant Fund and the Sir Harry Veitch Bequest Trust Fund, and remains in the museum’s collection today.^[1]