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| Victor Albert Prout Tableau of Mary, Queen of Scots alone in contemplation with Miss G. Moncrieffe 1863 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Victor Albert Prout Tableau of Mary, Queen of Scots attended by Rizzio with the Hon. Lewis Wingfield and Miss G. Moncrieffe 1863 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Victor Albert Prout Tableau of Mary, Queen of Scots attended by her ladies at Wemyss Castle with Miss H. Moncrieffe, Lady Ida Duff, the Hon. Miss White, Miss G. Moncrieffe, and Lady Anne Duff 1863 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
"In Edith Wharton's novel The House of Mirth, the Wellington Brys, a couple insecure about their standing in New York society, want to attract new friends. To succeed they must pull off a bold party. After careful thought, the "two baits" they use are an evening of expensive music and tableaux vivants, a series of living pictures popular among upper-class Victorians. The Brys enlist a dozen fashionable young women and costume them as characters from paintings by Goya, van Dyck, Titian, and Watteau. The women model scenes of nymphs dancing across a patch of flower-strewn grass or garlanding an altar, until the final red velvet curtain opens on Lily Bart, the novel's protagonist, presented without artifice. She is herself the work of art. While this moment marks Lily's social triumph, it also displays the era's love of the art of staging. With attention to lighting, costumes, props, backdrops, and set pieces, they recreated lushly theatrical scenes from classical art [or from literature or popular historical narratives, as here]. Of the constructed tableaux, Wharton writes, "to unfinished minds they remain, in spite of every enhancement of art, only a superior kind of wax-works; but to the responsive fancy they may give magic glimpses of the boundary world between fact and imagination." . . . When photography was invented in 1839, the familiar practice of role playing and staging scenes for tableaux became a natural subject for the new medium. People were quick to grasp the potential of the photograph as a virtual stage."
– Kristine Sommerville, from the Missouri Review (2017)
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| Victor Albert Prout Tableau of Elaine from The Idylls of the King with Miss H. Moncrieffe 1863 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Victor Albert Prout Tableau of The Soldier's Return with Lady Agnes Duff, The Master of Lovat, and Lady Anne Duff 1863 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Victor Albert Prout Tableau of Charlotte Corday contemplating her picture before her execution with Mr W. Kennedy Erskine and the Hon. Miss White 1863 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Victor Albert Prout Tableau of Faith, Hope, and Charity with Lady Agnes Duff, the Hon. Miss White, Miss G. Moncrieffe, and Lady Anne Duff 1863 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Victor Albert Prout Private Theatrical - Popping the Question with Miss Stapleton as Bobbin 1863 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Victor Albert Prout Private Theatrical - Popping the Question with Mrs. Erskine Wemyss as Miss Biffen 1863 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Victor Albert Prout Private Theatrical - Popping the Question with Miss G. Moncrieffe as Ellen Murray 1863 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Victor Albert Prout Private Theatrical - Popping the Question with Miss G. Moncrieffe as Ellen Murray and the Hon. Lewis Wingfield as Mr. Primrose 1863 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Victor Albert Prout Private Theatrical - Popping the Question with Miss H. Moncrieffe as Miss Winterblossom 1863 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Victor Albert Prout Private Theatrical - Popping the Question with the Hon. Lewis Wingfield as Mr Primrose and Miss H. Moncrieffe as Miss Winterblossom 1863 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Victor Albert Prout Private Theatrical - Domestic Economy with Viscount Macduff as Joey and the Hon. Lewis Wingfield as John Grumley 1863 albumen print National Galleries of Scotland |