#ellen terry

[plaidposh]

This is the same woman btw~

[victusinveritas]

The beetle wings dress

ELLEN TERRY AS LADY MCBETH AND THE BEETLE WINGS DRESS, 1889

"On 29 December 1888 a packed auditorium at London’s Lyceum Theatre sat in anticipation of the opening of Henry Irving’s revival of Macbeth. In taking the male lead and casting Ellen Terry (1847-1928) as Lady Macbeth, Irving was reuniting one of British theatre’s most cherished acting partnerships. Moreover, audience curiosity was piqued by Terry’s departure from her usual role of Shakespearean heroine to play a plotting villainess. As the curtain rose, her appearance on stage immediately drew gasps. For she emerged wearing a costume of bewitching splendour, a dress of shimmering green embellished with iridescent beetle-wing cases, finished with a velvet heather-coloured cloak over which her dark red hair, plaited in gold, cascaded.

Created by the esteemed costume designer Alice Laura Comyns-Carr and her dressmaker Ada Cort Nettleship, it was the first of three costumes intended to illustrate Lady Macbeth’s changing psychological state through the play. Inspired by a medieval effigy of Clotilde, queen of the Franks originally from Notre-Dame de Paris, Comyns-Carr combined the form of her open sleeved long gown and long braided hair surmounted by a crown with contemporary influences of artists in her circle, such as the Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones. The dress’s green embodied the ruthless ambition and plot to murder of the play’s opening acts, while the crochet construction overlaid with beetle-wing cases combined the look of ‘soft chain armour’, with the ‘appearance of the scales of a serpent’.

Although critics and theatregoers were divided over Terry’s characterisation, they were united on the visual impact of her performance. Her costume created an ethereal vision that ‘might have stood in the court of Camelot’. Oscar Wilde, noting the contrast between her dress and the austere garb of the male cast, quipped ‘Lady Macbeth seems an economical housekeeper, and evidently patronises local industries for her husband’s clothes and the servants’ liveries; but she takes care to do her own shopping in Byzantium’. The dress was further immortalised in John Singer Sargent’s commanding full-length portrait of Terry as Lady Macbeth in 1889 which pictured the dramatic moment Lady Macbeth claims her crown as witnessed by him on opening night."

Nationaltrustcollections.co.uk

[visionsofour-past]

• Ellen Terry, at the Age of Sixteen

Date: 1864

Photographer: Julia Margaret Cameron

Medium: Photogravure

[portrait-paintings]

Ellen Terry as Lady MacBeth

Artist: John Singer Sargent (American, 1856–1925)

Date: 1889

Medium: Oil paint on canvas

Collection: Tate Britain, London, United Kingdom

Description

Ellen Terry was a celebrated British actor, particularly known for playing Shakespearean roles. John Singer Sargent was struck by her appearance at the opening night of a production of Macbeth in 1888. He persuaded Terry to sit for a portrait in the character of Lady Macbeth, inventing the dramatic pose seen here, which did not occur in the production. The pose showcases Terry’s extraordinary dress, designed by Alice Comyns Carr. The flecks of cobalt blue represent the wings of jewel beetles that were stitched into the dress.

[marzipanandminutiae]

OHMYGOD OHMYGOD OHMYGOD

[darkurgetrash]

George Frederic Watts’ ‘Choosing’ / Shadowheart with Night Orchids

[countess--olenska]

Ellen Terry wore these costumes playing Lady Macbeth at the Lyceum Theatre in London in 1888.

[shakespearenews]

“Fashioned by Sargent” installation view. Far left, ‘‘Beetle Wing Dress’’ for Lady Macbeth. Sargent’s painting of the actress Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth, in the shimmering gown (which boasts actual beetle wing cases affixed to its surface), hangs nearby. The dress was created by Alice Laura Comyns-Carr. Credit...Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

If his portraiture approached theater, Sargent also had a way of turning moments from the stage into images richly steeped in the history of painting. His painting of the actress Ellen Terry in the role of Lady Macbeth, which she played to great acclaim at London’s Lyceum Theatre in 1888, recasts her as a Pre-Raphaelite heroine with long red plaits and a shimmering blue and green gown known as the “Beetle Wing Dress” (which boasts elaborate draped sleeves and actual beetle wing cases affixed to its surface). The costume, made by the designer Alice Comyns-Carr in collaboration with Terry and the dressmaker Ada Nettleship, is exhibited alongside the painting and may be the show’s most spectacular garment.

[silver-screen-divas]

[victoriansquirrel]

Went to the Sargent and Fashion exhibition last week and wasn’t prepared for this. Excuse the shoddy quality, I was too excited

[atundratoadstool]

I am delighted--as always--by the breadth of readings that have emerged regarding Jack's gangrenous-wound-sucking past with Van Helsing. I think it's worth noting that an episode of blood infection may have been one of the few fictionalized medical events in Dracula where Bram drew his inspiration from his brother George (a military doctor) instead of his brother Thornley (a brain surgeon whose medical writings are pretty firmly established as having contributed to depictions of Renfield and who consulted with Bram in the novel's drafting process). There's a mention in Ellen Terry's biography as to George Stoker assisting her following an injury to her thumb that resulted in "blood-poisoning" and could have progressed to something necessitating amputation.

[postcard-from-the-past]

English actress Ellen Terry on a vintage postcard

[thegoatsongs]

Our correspondent naïvely says that even Ellen Terry could not be so winningly attractive as some of these grubby-faced little children pretend—and even imagine themselves—to be.

Ellen Terry and Stoker were working together at Irving's Lyceum Theater at the time. Iriving was several years their senior, Terry and Stoker were around the same age. Terry would call Stoker "Ma" (mom) as a nickname as friends.

[the-cricket-chirps]

John Singer Sargent

Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth

1889

[duskodair]

happy Ellen Terry namedrop day!!! just a reminder that she was the UK's best paid woman (other than queen Victoria). She loved cats and she jokingly called Bram Stoker mum (because they were co-workers). leading lady of the lyceum, my beloved

[hyacinth-supernova]

Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth - John Singer Sargent, 1889