Part 404: “Scenery and Scene-Painters” 1871, third section
E. L. Blanchard wrote the article “Scenery and Scene-Painters” in 1871 for “The Era Almanack.” Here is the third section.
“Great improvements in the scenic department were made at the beginning of the last [18th] century, when Rich, who was Manager of the Playhouse in Lincoln’s Inn-fields, denominated the New Theatre, and set up in rivalry of Drury Lane, designed a series of spectacular entertainments, which drew the audiences from the old house, although it retained a strong company under the management of Wilkes, Booth, and Cibber.
Italy had long been famous for its scene-painters and the splendor of its pantomime representations. Canaletti, the great painter, designed the scenery for the Venetian stage. Some of these foreign artists were employed by Rich, and then it was the English first beheld the delightful effect of the picturesque as viewed through a splendid proscenium on a lengthened stage. The Managers of Drury, in self-defense, were compelled to attempt the same kind of entertainment, and they pressed into their service a celebrated scene-painter, named Devoto, and a ballet-master, Monsieur Thurmond, who projected a pantomime of which Jack Sheppard was the hero. This set the wits of the town on the managers, who, with the scene-painter, were dragged to the satiric whipping post. On these pantomimic pieces they were lavish of expense, as the scenery and machinery were the principal attractions.
When Rich removed his dramatic corps from Lincoln’s Inn-fields to the newly erected Theatre in Covent-garden, Hogarth caricatured the whole house moving in a procession across the market-place in front of the piazza, not forgetting to have a hit at his friend George Lambert, who scenes he piled in a wagon wherein the thunder and lightning were made conspicuous. Lambert, who had been joint scene-painter at Lincoln’s Inn, was appointed principal in that department at Covent-Garden, and it was in the scene-room here that he founded the Beef-steak Club. Harvey, a landscape painter, and Amiconi, who painted the fine groups on the upper part of the staircase at the old Buckingham House, executed the decorations of the proscenium, an allegory of Shakespeare, Apollo, and the Muses. John Laguerre, the historical painter, occasionally designed the scenes for Lincoln’s Inn stage, and the curious scene-cloth representing the Siege of Troy, depicted in Hogarths’ Southwark Fair, is from his design.
Michael Angelo Rooker, whimsically Italianized himself into Signor Rookerini, and who was at once painter, Harlequin, Scaramouch, and engraver, was principal scene-painter to the elder Colman at his Theatre in the Haymarket.”
To be continued…
