Charles Ricketts

Catalogue entry

N04684 COSTUME DESIGN c. 1920

Not inscribed.
Pencil and watercolour, 11 1/2×15 1/2 (29×39).
Presented by the National Art-Collections Fund 1933.
Coll: Purchased by the N.A.C.F. from the artist's executors 1932.

The costume has not been identified with certainty, but it has been suggested by George Nash and confirmed by Aubrey Ensor (letter of 11 January 1961) that it may be a design for Oscar Wilde's Salome as given in Japan 1920 (after the original production at King's Hall, Covent Garden, in 1906). A label on other designs for this production in the V. & A. states that the drawings were made to replace the original ones, lost in the customs at New York in 1920.

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

Read more