Editing William Quiller Orchardson (section)

==Years in London==
[[File:William Quiller Orchardson - Hard hit.jpg|thumbnail|left|William Quiller Orchardson – ''Hard Hit'']]
In 1862, at the age of thirty, Orchardson moved to London, and established himself at 37 [[Fitzroy Square]], where he was joined twelve months later by his friend [[John Pettie]]. The same house was afterwards inhabited by [[Ford Madox Brown]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Fitzroy Square Pages 52–63 ''Survey of London'': Volume 21, the Parish of St Pancras Part 3: Tottenham Court Road and Neighbourhood. Originally published by London County Council, London, 1949. |url=https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol21/pt3/pp52-63 |website=British History Online |access-date=4 August 2020}}</ref> 

The English public was not immediately attracted to Orchardson's work. It was too quiet to compel attention at the [[Royal Academy]], and Pettie, his junior by four years, stepped before him for a time and became the most readily accepted member of the school. Orchardson confined himself to the simplest themes and designs, to the most reticent schemes of colour. Among his most highly regarded pictures during the first eighteen years after his move to London were ''The Challenge'', ''Christopher Sly'', ''Queen of the Swords'', ''Conditional Neutrality'', ''Hard Hit'' – perhaps the best of all – and, within his own family, portraits of his wife and her father, Charles Moxon. In all these, good judgment and a refined imagination were united to a restrained but consummate technical dexterity. During these years he made a few drawings on wood, turning to account his early facility in this mode.{{cn|date=December 2022}}