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G0104
Paintings: G0104
Title
Thomas Caulfield
Technique
Oil on canvas
Subject
Character
Mirabel : The Inconstant; or The Way to Win Him
Artist
Dimensions
Height (canvas): 37cm
width (canvas): 28.5cm
height (frame): 46cm
width (frame): 38cm
width (canvas): 28.5cm
height (frame): 46cm
width (frame): 38cm
Provenance
John Bell (Bell sale at Leigh & Sotheby's 25 May 1805, lot 284); Charles Mathews
Other number
Mathews 388
RW/CKA 209
RW/CKA 209
Exhibition history
1833 London, Queen's Bazaar, Oxford Street, "Mr Mathews's Gallery of Theatrical Portraits" (388)
Engraving history
William S. Leney for Cawthorn's British Library 26 September 1795, line 11.1x7.6, pub. Bell's "British Theatre" (1797), vol 32
Mirabel is contracted to Oriana. She loves him but he apparently rejects her. In order to get her man she pretends to have taken the veil. Act IV, scene 2, is set in a Monastery with Oriana dressed in a nun's habit. Mirabel enters in a friar's habit and, convinced that he is going to lose Oriana, reveals his identity on the line "No, my fair Angel, but let me repent" (given on the engraving) and pleads with her to fulfil the contract. Mirabel wears a long black habit open to reveal pale buff breeches and waistcoat and a green coat.
Farquhar's comedy was first performed at Drury Lane on 28 November 1698. Caulfield did not play Young Mirabel in London. At the start of the 1791-92 season he joined the Drury Lane, where the part of Young Mirabel was always taken by Richard Wroughton until the end of the 1797-98 season, when it was taken over by Montague Talbot. The Bell text gives a Covent Garden cast, with Alexander Pope as Young Mirabel.
Farquhar's comedy was first performed at Drury Lane on 28 November 1698. Caulfield did not play Young Mirabel in London. At the start of the 1791-92 season he joined the Drury Lane, where the part of Young Mirabel was always taken by Richard Wroughton until the end of the 1797-98 season, when it was taken over by Montague Talbot. The Bell text gives a Covent Garden cast, with Alexander Pope as Young Mirabel.
