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Major Portraits and Minor Series in Eignteenth-Century Theatrical Portraiture
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 January 2009
Extract
In recent years, eighteenth-century actors' portraits have deservedly received growing attention from both art and theatre historians. For its extent, variety and quality, for its social and aesthetic implications, eighteenth-century theatrical portraiture demands a refined theoretical approach: it has helped to create an interdisciplinary field where new methods in dealing with theatre iconography have been profitably deployed. English and American scholars have contributed to develop this field in a specific way, devoting single studies and monographs to portraits of actors. In spite of the importance of French theatrical portraiture, French contributions are less significant. In most cases theatrical portraits are considered exclusively by art historians, and in the context of catalogues or monographs on a single painter. In France the stage portrait is often undervalued: it is relegated to a pictorial genre considered as inferior (tableaux de théâtre), or it is thought to derive from a disreputable theatricalization of history painting; in any case there has been a real difficulty in submitting these images to critical and specific investigation. In short, even if a new approach to theatrical iconography prevails over the strict utilitarianism of the theatre historians, who—in the best cases—sought in actors' portraits only documentary evidence of acting practice, costume or set design, more work has to be done by art historians, to accord theatrical images the independent status of an iconographic text.
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References
Notes
1. Here is not the place to record the relevant contributions of R. Mander and J. Mitchenson, K. A. Bumim, R. Paulson, R. D. Wark, J. Weinsheimer, G. Ashton, L. Bertelsen, D. Mannings, M. Postle, M. S. Wilson, and so on; most of them are quoted in the first English monograph on the eighteenth-century actors' portraits by West, Shearer, The Image of the Actor: Verbal and Visual Representation in the Age of Garrick and Kemble (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991)Google Scholar and in my forthcoming work: Le portrait d'acteur an XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Gallimard).
2. Some French art historians like Antoine Schnapper or François Moureau or theatre historians like Martine de Rougemont and Noëlle Guibert are excepted. See also Aliverti, Maria Ines, Il ritratto d'attore nel Settecento francese e inglese (Pisa: ETS, 1986).Google Scholar
3. The Heads and Characters of Illustrious Persons of Great Britain, with their Portraits engraved by Mr. Houbraken and Mr. Vertue, with their Lives and Characters, by T. Birch, 2 volumes (London, 1743–1751).
4. Theatre: the Age of Garrick. English Mezzotints from the Collection of the Hon. Christopher Lennox-Boyd (London: Courtauld Institute Galleries, 1994), a catalogue by C. Lennox-Boyd.
5. See the entry No. 660 in A Catalogue of the Library, Splendid Books of Prints, Poetical and Historical Tracts, of David Garrick, Esq., Saunders, , 23 04 1823, (London, 1823).Google Scholar Faesch albums have, so far, not been traced.
6. In my opinion many drawings generally attributed to Faesch, now at the Harvard Theatre Collection (Cambridge, Mass.) and at the Bibliothèque-Musée de la Comédie-Française, are ‘caiques’ from Faesch miniatures executed at the beginning of the nineteenth century, in order to produce new series of prints. Research on this corpus is now in progress.
7. Sayer and Bennett's Enlarged Catalogue of New and Valuable Prints, for 1775 lists ‘Designs in Miniature for Watch-Cases’, pp. 79–80; ‘Dramatic Characters, or Forty different Portraits of Mr. Garrick, and other capital Actors, in principal Scenes, Tragic as well as Comic, represented on the English Theatres, mostly from original drawings of De Fish, and beautifully engraved by Charles Grignion, in one neat Pocket Volume, price 10s. 6d., neatly coloured, 11.1s.’, pp. 108–9, and ‘Dramatic Characters of the French and Italian Theatres, consisting of Forty-five Portraits of the most capital Actors, in the principal Scenes of these Theatres, chiefly from original drawings of De Fish, and beautifully engraved by Mr. Grignion, in one neat Pocket Volume, price 10s. 6d., neatly coloured, 11.1s’, p. 109.
8. The frontispieces are signed Terry or Dodd. A rare set of 171 collected plays, exceptionally preserved, is listed in the sale catalogue of Books, Prints and Drawings from the Cavanagh Theatre Collection (London: Sotheby's, 20 July 1993).
9. See Bell's Edition of Shakespeare Plays, 1773–1774. Each play was issued separately and then bound in 12°; the editor, Francis Gentleman, was an actor and hack-playwright; Bell's second Edition of Shakespeare Plays, 1786–1788, 20 v.; Bell's British Theatre 1776–1778. In response to Bell, a group of Publishers planned The New English Theatre in Eight Volumes containing the most valuable Plays which have been Acted on the London Stage, 1776–1777, 8 volumes,- each play is illustrated with an engraved frontispiece in a more refined style than Bell's plates.
10. Advertisement in Bell's British Theatre, Vol. I, 1776, p. 4.
11. A general survey is provided by Claude Menges in her article: ‘Les Comédiens Français à travers l'estampe de 1715 à 1789’ (French and English text), Le Serment des Horaces, No. 1, (automne 1988-hiver 1989), pp. 103–11.