John Gielgud’s Room

Catalogue entry

N04881 JOHN GIELGUD'S ROOM 1933
 
Inscr. ‘C. Atwood 1933’ b.r.
Canvas, 24 3/4×30 (63·25×76).
Presented by Mrs E. L. Shute 1937.
Coll: Presumably purchased by Mrs Shute at the N.E.A.C. 1935.
Exh: N.E.A.C., October–November 1935 (38).

This picture was painted in Sir John Gielgud's flat at 7 Upper St Martin's Lane, at the time when he was playing Richard II in Gordon Daviot's Richard of Bordeaux at the New Theatre. The production, after a trial performance at the Arts Theatre in June 1932, began its highly successful run in February 1933 and Gielgud, in his autobiography Early Stages, 1938, p.238, recalls how he could watch from his flat window the crowds queueing for tickets outside the New Theatre.

Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, I

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