Part 397: “A Gossip about Scenery and Scene-Painters,” 1866, first section
While researching the English scene painting families, I came across an interesting article from 1866. It seems an appropriate time to share this article, as my house will soon be full of friends. This means that I will become distracted by good conversations over glasses of wine. It is also a good time to look at how the history of scenic art was presented during the mid-nineteenth century in the United Kingdom.
The article “A Gossip about Scenery and Scene-Painters,” was published in “The Era” on February 4, 1866. The first issue of “The Era” was published in 1838. Here is the first of five installments from the 1866 article.
“At a season when thousands of spectators, not only in the Metropolis, but in the chief towns of the United Kingdom, are nightly calling into their presence the scenic artist, who has conjured up before them landscapes of surpassing beauty or fairy palaces of dazzling grandeur and apparently interminable development, it will be an appropriate time to look back on the early years of that art which in our own day has been recognized as so essential to modern Managerial prosperity. No more is here intended than a rapid summary of a few little-known facts and a revival of some pleasant recollections; but to those who may hereafter think fit to deal with the subject, at a length in accordance with its importance, we offer materials which may not be without interest.
No future writers on this theme should be left unacquainted with the circumstance, recently made known by that acute Shakespearian critic, Mr. Frederick Guest Tomkins, that the first painter of moveable scenery in England was [Robert] Aggas and at Painter Stainers’ Hall, Little Trinity-lane, may yet be seen a fine specimen of the artist’s work. Those who passed a pleasant evening last summer in the fine old Courtroom of this most interesting City Hall will long retain a lively memory of the genial gathering invited to hear the particulars of the discovery.
The ancient scenery employed for open-air representations at first consisted of mere boughs, but afterwards of tapestry, not painted canvas. The Greek stage consisted of three parts, the seena, across the Theatre, upon the line of the curtain in our Theatres; the proscenium, where the actors perform; and the postscenium, the part behind the house. To form parts of the scenes there were prisms of framework, turning upon pivots, upon each face of which was stained a distinct picture; one for tragedy, consisting of large buildings, with columns, statues, and other corresponding ornaments; a second face, with houses, windows, and balconies, for comedy; a third applied to farce, with cottages, grottoes, and rural scenes. These were the scenes versatiles of Servius. Besides these there were scena ductiles, which drew backwards and forwards, and opened a view of the house, which was built upon the stage, and contained apartments for machinery or retirement of actors.
As to the patterns of the scenes in comedy the most considerable building was in the centre, that on the right hand was a little less elevated, and that on the left generally represented an inn. In the satirical pieces they had always a cave in the middle, a wretched cabin on the right, and on the left an old ruined temple or a landscape. In these representations perspective was observed, for Vitruvius remarks that “the rules of it were invented and practiced from the time of Aeschylus by a painter named Agararchius, who has even left a treatise upon it.” After the downfall of the Roman Empire these decorations of the stage were neglected till Peruzzi, a Siennese, who died in 1536, revived them.”
To be continued…
