John Singer Sargent: Miss Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth

"Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth"
by John Singer Sargent

"In 1889 John Singer Sargent exhibited at the Academy portraits of 'Sir George Henschel,' 'Mrs. George Gribble,' and 'Henry Irving'; at the New English Art Club, 'A Morning Walk,' and 'St. Martin's Summer,' and at the New Gallery the well-known picture of 'Miss Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth.'

Ellen Terry's dress for Lady Macbeth was designed by Mrs. Comyns-Carr, who relates on the first night of the play Sargent shared her box and, on the appearance of Ellen Terry on the stage, exclaimed with that lingering intonation so familiar to to those who knew him, 'I say!' It was a sign in him, unpretentious in itself as a schoolboy's expression of delight, that he had been 'bowled over.'

Comyns-Carr described Terry's dress' genesis thusly: 'It was cut from fine Bohemian yarn of soft green silk and blue tinsel after costume designs by Viollet le Duc. Henry Irving did not think it brilliant enough, so it was sewn all over with red green beetle wings and a narrow border of Celtic design worked out in rubies and diamonds. To this was added a cloak of shot velvet in heather tones upon which griffins were embroidered in flame-coloured tinsel. The wimple and veil were held in place by a cordet of rubies and two long plaits twisted with gold hung to her knees.' This costume survives in the Ellen Terry Memorial Museum in Kent.

An art critic from 'The Times' reported that Sargent chose her pose to express 'the moment when Lady Macbeth, the deed accomplished, is putting on the crown . . . The face is pallid as death, and on it the artist has striven to express the meeting point and the clash of two supreme emotions - of ambition, and of the sense of crime accomplished and the moral law thrown down.'

It was Oscar Wilde who spoke of her appearance to pose for Sargent in Tite Street: 'The street that on a wet and dreary morning has vouchsafed the vision of Lady Macbeth in full regalia magnificently seated in a four-wheeler can never again be as other streets.' In her diary Ellen Terry gave her opinion of her portrait: 'The picture of me is nearly finished, and I think it magnificent. The green and blue of the dress is splendid, and the expression as Lady Macbeth holds the crown over her head is quite wonderful . . . Sargent's picture is talked of everywhere and quarrelled about as much as my way of playing the part. The picture is the sensation of the year. Of course opinions differ about it, but there are dense crowds round it day after day.'

The picture was purchased by Henry Irving, who was himself sitting to Sargent at this time, and hung for many years in the alcove of the Beefsteak Room, where the actor liked to entertain."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Sargent" by Evan Charteris and "John Singer Sargent: The Early Portraits" by Richard Ormond and Elaine Kilmurray.)