J. Comyns Carr

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1893 Vanity Fair drawing
1893 Vanity Fair drawing

Joseph William Comyns Carr (1 March 1849 – 12 December 1916) was an English drama and art critic, gallery director, author, poet, playwright and theatre manager.

Contents

[edit] Life and career

J. Comyns Carr was born in Marylebone, Middlesex, England, the seventh of the ten children of Jonathan Carr, a woollen draper, and his Irish wife, Catherine Grace Comyns. His sister, Kate Comyns Carr, was a portrait artist. From 1862 to 1865 he attended Bruce Castle School, Tottenham, Middlesex. He studied law at the University of London and graduated in 1869, beginning to practise at the bar at the Inner Temple, London, but he soon gave it up for a career in journalism and became drama critic for the Echo.[1]

He married author Alice Vansittart (nee Strettell) in 1873. Alice had designed the bold costume that Ellen Terry wore as Lady Macbeth, and in which John Singer Sargent painted her in 1889. Sargent also painted Mrs. Comyns Carr in 1889[2] and several portraits of her sister, Alma, and had illustrated Alma's Spanish and Italian Folk Songs in 1887. Comyns Carr and his wife had three children: Philip, Dorothy, and Arthur (later Sir Arthur Strettell Comyns Carr (1882–1965), barrister and Liberal MP). Comyns Carr was a member of the Arts Club and the Garrick Club.[3] Comyns Carr published two memoirs: Some Eminent Victorians (1908), and Coasting Bohemia (1914).[4]

He died of cancer at the age of 67 at his home in South Kensington, London. He was buried in Highgate cemetery.

[edit] Art career

In 1873, Comyns Carr became an art critic for the Pall Mall Gazette. In 1875 he was engaged as the English editor of the influential French journal L'Art. He founded and edited Art and Letters in 1881–83 and was the first editor of The English Illustrated Magazine, editing that journal from 1883-86. He also wrote for a number of other journals including the Art Journal, Saturday Review, the Examiner, the World and the Manchester Guardian.[1] Comyns Carr wrote books about art championing the Pre-Raphaelites, as well as monographic works on artists such as Edward Burne-Jones, Frederick Walker and Sir Hubert von Herkomer. In 1873, he wrote a series of articles on contemporary artists in The Globe. These attracted some attention and resulted in a friendship between Comyns Carr and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.[3]

He and Charles Hallé were appointed co-directors of the Grosvenor Gallery in 1877. James McNeill Whistler, Rossetti and Burne-Jones exhibited frequently at the Grosvenor Gallery. In 1888 Comyns Carr and Hallé resigned from that gallery to found the rival New Gallery, capturing Burne-Jones and many of the Grosvenor Gallery's other artists.[1] Comyns Carr continued as co-director until 1908. He also wrote the introduction to the British section of the International Exhibition of Fine Arts at Rome in 1911 and later was appointed as the English representative to the Art Congress.[3]

[edit] Theatre career

Comyns Carr was also the author of dramatic works such, beginning with several light comedies in the 1880s for the German Reed Entertainments at St George's Hall. He also wrote numerous plays and adapted a number of French plays, such as Frou-Frou, produced at the Princess's Theatre, London (1881); a stage adaptation of Far From the Madding Crowd co-authored with Thomas Hardy (1881); Hugh Conway's Called Back (1884), which was very successful for the actor–manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree; Dark Days; Boys Together; In the Days of the Duke; A Fireside Hamlet; The United Pair; The Naturalist (1887, an operetta with music by Charles King Hall); The Friar; and Forgiveness.[1]

Scene from King Arthur
Scene from King Arthur

Comyns Carr was Tree's literary adviser and partner at the Haymarket Theatre from 1887 to 1893. He then leased the Comedy Theatre from 1893 to 1896. At the same time, his King Arthur (1895), a blank verse play inspired by the writings of Thomas Malory and Alfred Tennyson, as well as the visual images of the Pre-Raphaelites, was produced by Henry Irving in the Lyceum Theatre, starring Irving and Ellen Terry, with music composed by Arthur Sullivan and sets, costumes and artwork designed by Comyns Carr's friend Edward Burne-Jones. This spectacular production was a success for Irving and ran for over 100 performances, also touring North America. Another play that year was Delia Harding, an adaptation of a Victorien Sardou play, at the Comedy Theatre. Also for Irving's company, he produced and English version of Madame Sans-Gêne by Sardou and Émile Moreau in 1897, which played on both sides of the Atlantic. Comyns Carr also dramatised The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1910, starring H. B. Irving at Queen's Theatre.[5]

Comyns Carr collaborated with Arthur Wing Pinero and Arthur Sullivan on The Beauty Stone, a comic opera, at the Savoy Opera in 1898. The theme was that "only through blindness can true love be realized."[6] Comyns Carr's adaptation of Oliver Twist was produced by Herbert Beerbohm Tree at His Majesty's Theatre, London (1905).[7] It was also produced on Broadway in 1905 and 1912.[8] Comyns Carr managed the Lyceum Theatre from 1899 to 1904 after Irving transferred its control to a company.[3]

Tristram and Iseult (1906) was produced at the Adelphi Theatre starring Matheson Lang, Lily Brayton and Oscar Asche. An adaptation of Dickens' The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1907) was produced by Tree in Cardiff. Comyns Carr's theory of the play was that Jasper, under the influence of opium attempted to act upon his murderous impulses, but Drood, overhearing his uncle's ravings, was able to escape.[9] This was followed by an adaptation of Goethe's Faust (1908) in collaboration with Stephen Phillips.[3]

Comyns Carr was artistic adviser at the Covent Garden Theatre in 1913–14. A fan of Richard Wagner, Comyns Carr was responsible for the first English performance of Wagner's Parsifal in 1914 at Covent Garden.[3]

[edit] Books by Comyns Carr

  • Drawings by the Old Masters, 1877
  • The Abbey Church of St Albans, 1878
  • Examples of Contemporary Art, 1878
  • Essays on Art, 1879
  • Hubert Herkomer, 1882
  • Art in Provincial France, 1883
  • Frederick Walker: An Essay, 1885
  • Papers on Art, 1885 (available online here)
  • Exhibition of Works of Sir Edward Burne-Jones 1898
  • Some Eminent Victorians; Personal Recollections in the World of Art and Letters, 1908 (available online here)
  • Coasting Bohemia, 1914
  • The Ideals of Painting, 1917 (published posthumously).

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b c d Biography of Comyns Carr at the Whistler website
  2. ^ Painting of Alice Vansittart Comyns Carr
  3. ^ a b c d e f Esposito, Anthony. "Comyns Carr, Joseph William (1849–1916)" in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press (2004)
  4. ^ Vansittart (1920) P.1
  5. ^ http://dinamico.unibg.it/rls/stage.htm Information about Comyns Carr's version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde]
  6. ^ Information about The Beauty Stone
  7. ^ Photo from Oliver Twist
  8. ^ IBDB profile of Oliver Twist
  9. ^ Information about Comyns Carr's Mystery of Edwin Drood

[edit] References

  • Carr, Alice Vansittart Strettell. J. Comyns Carr: Stray Memories by His Wife, London, 1920 (available online here)
  • Carr, Alice Vansittart Strettell. Mrs. J. Comyns Carr’s Reminiscences, ed. E. Adam, London, 1926.
  • Bénézit, E., Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs, 8 vols, Paris, 1956-61.
  • Ward, Humphrey Thomas., Men of the Time: A Dictionary of Contemporaries, G. Routledge and sons, London 1887.(available online here)

[edit] External links