拍品專文
John Philip Kemble was a renowned actor during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Born into a distinguished theatrical family, he made his stage debut in 1776 as part of the Chamberlain’s Company at Wolverhampton. He later joined the Tate Wilkinson’s York Circuit, claiming in a letter to have a repertory of sixty-eight tragic and fifty-eight comic roles. Kemble became especially renowned as a Shakespearean actor and his performances as Hamlet were lauded by critics and the public after his first performance in the role at Drury Lane in 1783. In 1788, Richard Brinsely Sheridan, the owner of the Drury Lane theatre and a famed playwright, appointed Kemble as acting manager of the establishment, where he continued to act until 1801. He later managed the Covent Garden theatre until 1817, when poor health forced him to retire.
This impressive portrait is the largest of Lawrence’s several full-length depictions of the actor. The picture is believed to have been painted over the artist’s Prospero Raising the Storm, executed in 1793. For its creation, Lawrence employed the boxer John Jackson as a model for the figure, while the child was modelled on one of Sheridan’s young sons. Lawrence painted four large-scale portraits of Kemble during his career, portraying the actor in his famed roles: as Coriolanus (London, Guildhall Art Gallery, inv. no. 844) in 1798; as Hamlet (London, Tate Britain, inv. no. N00142) in 1801; as Rolla in the present work in circa 1799-1800; and as Cato, from Joseph Addison’s 1712 Cato, a Tragedy (London, National Portrait Gallery, inv. no. 6869) in 1812.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s Pizarro, adapted from the German play Die Spänier in Peru by August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzbue, opened on 24 May 1799, and quickly became one of the greatest theatrical successes of the decade, with Kemble’s Rolla amongst the most acclaimed performances. The play dramatized the struggles of the Peruvians for independence under the yolk of Spanish rule and, by 1800, had become so popular that no fewer than fifteen new editions of the text had been published, accompanied by numerous extended critical commentaries (J.A. Carlson, ‘Trying Sheridan's Pizarro’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, XXXVIII, 1996, p. 359). Lawrence’s monumental canvas is taken from Act V, Scene II, set in ‘The Out-Post of the Spanish Camp – the background wild and rocky, with a Torrent falling down a precipice over which a bridge is formed by a fell’d Tree’. Rolla, an Inca hero, makes his entrance in chain, having been captured by the Spanish villain Pizarro. In order to fight honourably, these chains are removed by Pizarro, who provides Rolla with a sword. The child in the scene is the son of Rolla’s friend, Alonzo, a Spaniard who has sided with the Peruvians and married a Peruvian woman, Cora. The culmination of the action comes with Pizarro telling his men to throw the child into the sea, whereupon Rolla snatches him and begins to make for safety proclaiming: ‘Then was this sword Heaven’s gift, not Thine! [Seizes the Child]---Who moves one step to follow me, dies upon the spot’. As Kemble, who made a number of his own changes to Sheridan’s text, fled the stage, his character was shot as he pushed down the tree bridging the ravine, ensuring his escape. In the succeeding scene, the heroic Rolla delivers the child into the arms of its mother, Cora, and dies.
The design of the play was lavish, with scenery designed by leading theatre painters, like the great Marinari and possibly Philip James de Loutherbourg (1740-1812). The cast was equally significant and, along with Kemble, included his elder sister Sarah Siddons, perhaps the most famous actress of her generation, and Dorothea Jordan, the mistress of the future William IV, famously portrayed as Hippolyta by Hoppner (on loan to London, National Portrait Gallery, inv. no. NPG L174).
This impressive portrait is the largest of Lawrence’s several full-length depictions of the actor. The picture is believed to have been painted over the artist’s Prospero Raising the Storm, executed in 1793. For its creation, Lawrence employed the boxer John Jackson as a model for the figure, while the child was modelled on one of Sheridan’s young sons. Lawrence painted four large-scale portraits of Kemble during his career, portraying the actor in his famed roles: as Coriolanus (London, Guildhall Art Gallery, inv. no. 844) in 1798; as Hamlet (London, Tate Britain, inv. no. N00142) in 1801; as Rolla in the present work in circa 1799-1800; and as Cato, from Joseph Addison’s 1712 Cato, a Tragedy (London, National Portrait Gallery, inv. no. 6869) in 1812.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s Pizarro, adapted from the German play Die Spänier in Peru by August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzbue, opened on 24 May 1799, and quickly became one of the greatest theatrical successes of the decade, with Kemble’s Rolla amongst the most acclaimed performances. The play dramatized the struggles of the Peruvians for independence under the yolk of Spanish rule and, by 1800, had become so popular that no fewer than fifteen new editions of the text had been published, accompanied by numerous extended critical commentaries (J.A. Carlson, ‘Trying Sheridan's Pizarro’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, XXXVIII, 1996, p. 359). Lawrence’s monumental canvas is taken from Act V, Scene II, set in ‘The Out-Post of the Spanish Camp – the background wild and rocky, with a Torrent falling down a precipice over which a bridge is formed by a fell’d Tree’. Rolla, an Inca hero, makes his entrance in chain, having been captured by the Spanish villain Pizarro. In order to fight honourably, these chains are removed by Pizarro, who provides Rolla with a sword. The child in the scene is the son of Rolla’s friend, Alonzo, a Spaniard who has sided with the Peruvians and married a Peruvian woman, Cora. The culmination of the action comes with Pizarro telling his men to throw the child into the sea, whereupon Rolla snatches him and begins to make for safety proclaiming: ‘Then was this sword Heaven’s gift, not Thine! [Seizes the Child]---Who moves one step to follow me, dies upon the spot’. As Kemble, who made a number of his own changes to Sheridan’s text, fled the stage, his character was shot as he pushed down the tree bridging the ravine, ensuring his escape. In the succeeding scene, the heroic Rolla delivers the child into the arms of its mother, Cora, and dies.
The design of the play was lavish, with scenery designed by leading theatre painters, like the great Marinari and possibly Philip James de Loutherbourg (1740-1812). The cast was equally significant and, along with Kemble, included his elder sister Sarah Siddons, perhaps the most famous actress of her generation, and Dorothea Jordan, the mistress of the future William IV, famously portrayed as Hippolyta by Hoppner (on loan to London, National Portrait Gallery, inv. no. NPG L174).