Charles Ricketts

Costume Design for Tubal in ‘The Merchant of Venice’

1918

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Artist: Charles Ricketts 1866–1931
Medium: Watercolour and graphite on paper
Dimensions: Support: 387 × 279 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Presented by the Art Fund 1933
Reference: N04687

Catalogue entry

N04687 COSTUME DESIGN FOR TUBAL 1918

Inscr. ‘Merchant of Venice Y.M.C.A.’ t.l. and ‘Tubal’ t.r.
Pencil and watercolour, 15 1/4×11 (39×28).
Presented by the National Art-Collections Fund 1933.
Coll: See No.4684.
Lit: Ricketts, 1939, pp.302–3.

Tubal, a Jew, is a friend of Shylock's who brings him the news that Antonio's argosy is lost (Merchant of Venice, Act III, scene i). Costumes were designed in September 1918 for this play, Twelfth Night and Two Gentlemen of Verona for performances at the Y.M.C.A. hut in Le Havre and Paris. Ricketts mentions this in a letter to Laurence Binyon (loc. cit.) in which he gives the sources of some of the costumes and adds that ‘Shannon agrees the designs are perhaps my best.’

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