Eighteenth-Century Performances of Shakespeare Recorded in the Theatrical Portraits of the Garrick Club

Summary

But he who struts his hour upon the stage

Can scarce extend his fame for half an age;

Nor pen nor pencil can the actor save,

The art and artist share one common grave.

(David Garrick, Prologue to The Clandestine Marriage, 1766)

'The theatrical profession, unfortunately, is one made up of perishable properties.' So wrote the actress Anne Mathews in 1838, despairing of ever describing her husband Charles's performances. The same thought lies behind David Garrick's affecting couplets printed above, with their deliberate echo of Macbeth's 'poor player, / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage / And then is heard no more'. But Garrick's verses are not strictly honest: the pen might not be much use, but the pencil (as a paint-brush was then called) could save an actor and his art. Garrick invented theatrical painting: his artists - William Hogarth, Francis Hayman, Johann Zoffany and many others - clearly had an input, but the idea was his. It is also a distinctly British branch of painting, a peculiar hybrid - part history, part genre and part portraiture. The world's best collection of this unique art form belongs to the Garrick Club, London.