Sir Noël Coward

Veronica Flint-Shipman (1931-2014) was a former ballet dancer who took over running the Phoenix Theatre on Charing Cross Road, which her husband Gerald had inherited it from his father, Alfred Shipman, who had originally purchased the theatre when it was being built in the late 1920s. The theatre had a deep connection with Sir Noël Coward, having opened in 1930, with Coward’s classic play Private Lives, starring Coward, Gertrude Lawrence, Laurence Olivier and Adrianne Allen. Veronica Flint-Shipman produced several of the theatre’s productions, and Sir Noël Coward gifted the present fine portrait by Edward Seago to Veronica at the Phoenix Theatre on the occasion of his 70th birthday, to thank the theatre for the staging of A Talent to Amuse. Please see lots 164 and 165 for two further works from the collection of the late Veronica Flint-Shipman.