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G0202
Paintings: G0202
Title
Dame Edith Evans, Sir Godfrey Tearle
Technique
Oil on canvas
Subject
Character
Cleopatra : Antony and Cleopatra
Antony : Antony and Cleopatra
Antony : Antony and Cleopatra
Artist
Date
1947
Dimensions
Height: 109.2cm
Width: 137.1cm
height (frame): 122cm
width (frame): 147cm
Width: 137.1cm
height (frame): 122cm
width (frame): 147cm
Inscription/signature
"Feliks Topolski '47" (brown paint b. r.)
Provenance
Edith Evans; bequeathed to Margaret Rawlings, by whom presented to the Garrick Club, 1977
Other number
GCL 734
Gift 877
Gift 877
Exhibition history
1962 Chichester, Chichester Antiques Ltd, "The Painter and the Stage" (64)
This evocation of Shakespeare's tragedy is loosely painted on a white ground with the artist's characteristic thick impasto on the faces. The striking figure of Cleopatra holds a fan, and wears gold-scaled body armour and a red frock. Antony wears greenish body armour and a helmet with plumes.
Edith Evans played Cleopatra rather late in life, in a revival at the Piccadilly Theatre in December 1946. The production was directed by Glen Byam Shaw, designed by Motley, and had music by Anthony Hopkins. Anthony Quayle played Enobarbus. According to Muriel St Clare Byrne, "The costumes represented a free treatment of the Renaissance style, with some suggestions of Roman and Egyptian, and were so designed in order to bear the same kind of relationship to early 17th century theatrical practice as the setting bore to the Shakespeare stage."
Edith Evans played Cleopatra rather late in life, in a revival at the Piccadilly Theatre in December 1946. The production was directed by Glen Byam Shaw, designed by Motley, and had music by Anthony Hopkins. Anthony Quayle played Enobarbus. According to Muriel St Clare Byrne, "The costumes represented a free treatment of the Renaissance style, with some suggestions of Roman and Egyptian, and were so designed in order to bear the same kind of relationship to early 17th century theatrical practice as the setting bore to the Shakespeare stage."
