Staged

Antoine Coypel
Athalie chassée du temple
(scene from Racine's Athalie)
1696
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Giuseppe Valeriani
Stage Set with Cascade in a Garden
(design for opera Bellerophon by Francesco Araja)
ca. 1750
drawing
British Museum

Mauro Antonio Tesi
Stage Design
ca. 1755
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Romolo Achille Liverani
Stage Set with Tent of Genghis Khan
(design for ballet by Luigi Henry)
1828
drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Honoré Daumier
Théâtre-Français
1856
oil on panel
National Gallery of Art,Washington DC

Constantin Guys
The Loge of the French Empress
ca. 1860
ink and watercolor on paper
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Death of Lady Macbeth
ca. 1875-76
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Lucien Pissarro
Le Café Concert
1880
watercolor and gouache on silk
British Museum

William Henry Lippincott
A Private Rehearsal
1896
oil on canvas
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Pablo Picasso
En scène
ca. 1901
pastel on paper
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Everett Shinn
The White Ballet
(imitation of Degas)
1904
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Werner Mantz
Konzertsaal
1927
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Elizabeth Olds
From the Top Balcony
1940
screenprint
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Joseph Hirsch
The Hecklers
1948
lithograph
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Diane Arbus
Contortionist Lydia Suarez
performing for an audience, Hubert’s Museum N.Y.C.
1958
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Robert Adams
A Matinee at a mall - Lakewood, Colorado
1973
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Victoria Gewirz
Spool
ca. 2007
inkjet print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

A Tomb on the Shore

Stay off from me, wild sea,

                    two coffins' length,

and seethe and whine

                    with all your power.

But if you do sack the grave

                    of Eumares, me,

you'll find nothing real:

                    just dirt and bone.

– from the Greek Anthology, translated by Alan Marshfield

Storytelling in Eighteenth-Century Paintings

Johann Heinrich Tischbein the Elder
Young Woman Painting
1758
oil on canvas
Glasgow Museums

James Northcote
The Murder of Edward Prince of Wales at Tewkesbury
ca. 1795
oil on canvas
Maidstone Museum, Kent

"This painting depicts an incident towards the end of the Wars of the Roses, after the Battle of Tewkesbury, 4th May 1471, which the Prince of Wales and his mother lost.  . . .  The painting was probably not worked out in detail beforehand. During its restoration in 1990 many changes of position of limbs and accessories were discovered. Northcote's rather slapdash technique (fashionable at the time) and his liberal use of the non-drying bitumen pigment, made this work difficult to conserve to an exhibitable standard."

– curator's notes from the Maidstone Museum

Antonio Zucchi
Scene of Strife in Classical Dress
1767
oil on canvas
National Trust, Nostell Priory, Yorkshire

Edward Francis Burney
Battle of Jersey - The Death of Major Peirson
1781
oil on canvas
Jersey Museum and Art Gallery, St Helier

George Morland
Seashore: Fishermen hauling in a Boat
1791
oil on canvas
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

"George Morland showed a talent for painting at a very early age and exhibited chalk drawings at the Royal Academy as early as 1773, aged ten. He was apprenticed to his father, the painter Henry Robert Morland, for seven years from 1777. During that time he was chiefly employed in the copying and forging of paintings, particularly seventeenth-century Dutch landscapes. From 1790 onwards Morland was producing larger canvases than he had previously and became particularly associated with rustic and smuggling scenes. He had a prolific output, reputedly painting more than 800 works in the last eight years of his life, but his alcoholism meant he was often plagued by debt."

– curator's notes from the Victoria & Albert Museum

Francis Wheatley
Rescue of Aemilia from the Shipwreck
(scene from Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors)
1794
oil on canvas
Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon

Anonymous British Artist
Return of the Prodigal Son
18th century
oil on canvas
Eltham Palace, London

Richard Wilson
Destruction of Niobe's Children
ca. 1768
oil on canvas
National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth

Herman van der Mijn
Amnon and Tamar
ca. 1725
oil on panel
Colchester and Ipswich Museums, Essex

Zoffany-Johan-
Anatomy Lecture by William Hunter
1772
oil on canvas
Royal College of Physicians, London

"William Hunter (1718-1783) was a Scottish-born anatomist, surgeon and midwife who became 'perhaps the best teacher of anatomy that ever lived.' Hunter built up a busy practice and was appointed physician-extraordinary to the Queen. His success enabled him to establish an anatomy school in Great Windmill Street, London, which included lecture theatres, dissecting rooms and a museum. He established a superb library and collection of medals and natural history specimens which today forms the collection of the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow. The painting shows Hunter in his role as professor of anatomy at the Royal Academy of Art, lecturing on stage with anatomical and live models."

– curator's notes from the Royal College of Physicians

François Boucher
Mars and Venus surprised by Vulcan
ca. 1754
oil on canvas
Wallace Collection, London

John Wootton
Haymaking in a Landscape with View of the Severn Hills
ca. 1740
oil on canvas
Government Art Collection, London

Agostino Brunias
Servants Washing a Deer
ca. 1775
oil on canvas
Yale Center for British Art

Joseph Highmore
The Good Samaritan
1744
oil on canvas
Tate Britain

Joseph Wright of Derby
An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump
1768
oil on canvas
National Gallery, London

"An audience has gathered around a lecturer to watch an experiment. It is night, and the room is lit by a single candle that burns behind a large rounded glass containing a diseased human skull. A white cockatoo has been placed in a glass container from which the air is being pumped to create a vacuum. Will the lecturer expel the air completely and kill the bird, or allow the air back in and revive it? Wright focuses on the viewers' differing reactions – from the girl unable to watch, to the lovers with eyes only for each other. This is the largest, most ambitious and dramatic of the series of 'candlelight' pictures Wright painted during the 1760s. It captures the drama of a staged scientific experiment but it also functions as a vanitas – a painting concerning the passing of time, the limits of human knowledge and the frailty of life itself."

– curator's notes from the National Gallery

Painted Portraits of Stage Performers

attributed to Jean-Honoré Fragonard after Domenico Fetti
Portrait of actor Tristano Martinelli
ca. 1760
oil on canvas
Manchester Art Gallery

attributed to William Hamilton
Portrait Study of Mrs. Siddons
ca. 1784
oil on canvas
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

attributed to Richard Cosway
Mrs. Siddons reading in a Grotto
ca. 1810
oil on canvas
Scarborough Art Gallery, Yorkshire

Anonymous British Artist
John Philip Kemble as Vicentio in Measure for Measure
ca. 1794
oil on canvas
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

William Beechey
Portrait of John Philip Kemble
1798-99
oil on canvas
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London

anonymous copyist after Thomas Lawrence
John Philip Kemble as Rolla
in Pizarro by Richard Brinsley Sheridan
1800
oil on canvas
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

"My brave associates – partners of my toil, my feelings and my fame! – can Rolla's words add vigour to the virtuous energies which inspire your hearts? – No –YOU have judged as I have, the foulness of the crafty plea by which these bold invaders would delude you – Your generous spirit has compared as mine has, the motives, which, in a war like this, can animate their minds, and ours. – THEY by a strange frenzy driven, fight for power, for plunder, and our homes. – THEY follow an adventurer whom they fear – and obey a power which they hate – WE serve a monarch whom we love – a God whom we adore. – Wherever they move in anger, desolation tracks their progress! – Wherever they pause in amity, affliction mourns their friendship! – They boast, they come but to improve our state, enlarge our thoughts, and free us from the yoke of error! – Yes – THEY will give enlightened freedom to our minds, who are themselves the slaves of passion, avarice and pride – They offer us their protection – Yes, such protection as vultures give to lambs – covering and devouring them! – They call on us to barter all of good we have inherited and proved, for the desperate chance of something better which they promise. – Be our plain answer this: The throne WE honour is the PEOPLE'S CHOICE – the laws we reverence are our brave fathers' legacy – the faith we follow teaches us to live in bonds of charity with all mankind, and die with hope of bliss beyond the grave. Tell your invaders this, and tell them too, we seek no change; and, least of all, such change as they would bring us."

– Pizarro, or, The Spaniards in Peru: A Tragedy in Five Acts (Act II, scene 2) by Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1799), adapted from Die Spanier in Peru by August von Kotzebue (1796)

Gilbert Stuart
Portrait of John Philip Kemble
ca. 1785
oil on canvas
National Portrait Gallery, London

François Bouchot
Portrait of opera singer Giulia Grisi
1840
oil on canvas
Royal Academy of Music, London

John Partridge
Portrait of opera singer Gaetano Crivelli
ca. 1825
oil on canvas
Royal Society of Musicians of Great Britain, London

attributed to Henry Fuseli
Harriet Mellon as Mistress Page in The Merry Wives of Windsor
ca. 1795
oil on canvas
Burton Gallery, University of Leeds

Thomas Gainsborough
Portrait of dancer Giovanna Baccelli
ca. 1782
oil on canvas
Tate Britain

William Nicholson
Miss Wish Wynne as Janet Cannot
in The Great Adventure by Arnold Bennett
1913
oil on canvas
Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery

Nina Hamnett
Portrait of dancer Rupert Doone
1922-23
oil on canvas
Doncaster Museum and Art Gallery, Yorkshire

Hugh Goldwin Rivière
Three Impressions of singer Jean Sterling Mackinlay
1912
oil on canvas
Royal Academy of Music, London

Philip Harris
Portrait of dancer Anthony Dowell
1995
oil on canvas
National Portrait Gallery, London

Painted Impressions of Stage Performances

Anonymous French Artist
Scene from Le Magnifique
(comic opera by Michel-Jean Sedaine and André Grétry)
ca. 1773
oil on canvas
Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, County Durham

Samuel de Wilde
Joseph George Holman as Chamont
(scene from The Orphan by Thomas Otway)
1785
oil on canvas
Museum of London

Francis Wheatley
Lady Easy's Steinkirk
(scene from The Fearless Husband by Colley Cibber)
ca. 1790
oil on canvas
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Thomas Kirk
Aaron the Moor with Demetrius, Nurse and Child
(scene from Titus Andronicus by Shakespeare)
ca. 1796
oil on canvas
Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon

Thomas Stothard
Arrival of the Princess of France
(scene from Love's Labour's Lost by Shakespeare)
ca. 1800
oil on canvas
Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon

James Lonsdale
Angelica Catalani as Semiramide
(scene from the opera Semiramide by Marco Portogallo)
ca. 1808
oil on canvas
Royal Academy of Music, London

Laura Wilson Barker
Ellen Terry as Juliet
(scene from Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare)
ca. 1886
oil on paper
National Trust, Smallhythe Place, Kent

Charles Buchel
Herbert Beerbohm Tree as Othello
(scene from Othello by Shakespeare)
1914
oil on board
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

David Bomberg
The Tragedians
1919
oil on canvas
University College London Art Museum

(This Line Intentionally Left Blank)

we all got tickets to The Truth
finally we thought finally
when the curtain fell away
our indrawn breaths could be heard
even in the next theater
even the gasp of the mime
who had slipped in among us
a loud whushing like reams of litter
whirling upward in a gale
hands shot to mouths and mouths
fell open I couldn't say within
how many seconds
all our minds shut some
slamming others just a click
like 300 parallel
rows of tipped dominoes
a racket of almost unison

believe me we wouldn't
have resisted anything
but the truth
so instantly and universally
yet we sat there and waited
for something else
which you could say we also got
if you count the mime's
unpleasant remark
so she wasn't even a real mime
probably part of what was
clearly just a performance

– J. Allyn Rosser (2011)

Nigel Ramsey Newton
Hamlet at the New Theatre
1934
oil on canvas
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Maurice MacGonigal
The Olympia, Dublin
ca. 1935-36
oil on canvas
Ulster Museum, Belfast

Mario Sironi
Dancing on Stage
ca. 1935
oil on board
Estorick Collection, London

Elizabeth Montgomery
Peggy Ashcroft as Irina and Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies as Olga
(scene from The Three Sisters by Chekhov)
ca. 1938
oil on canvas
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Sidney Smith
Memory of Les Sylphides
(ballet by Michel Fokine)
1943
oil on canvas
Naughton Gallery, Queen's University, Belfast

Kevin Sinnott
Turandot
(opera by Giacomo Puccini)
1987
oil on canvas
National Museum Cardiff (Wales)