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Lot Essay
We are very grateful to Wendy Baron for her assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.
The present composition is discussed by Dr Wendy Baron in the 1992 exhibition catalogue; 'A portrait study of Miss Helen Couper-Black, general manager of the d'Oyly Carte Theatre Company, collapsed on a sofa in exhaustion.
The sitter had joined the company as secretary in 1877, the year Richard d'Oyly Carte took over the Opera Comique to found his own organisation. This became above all renowned for its presentations of the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan, for which d'Oyly Carte built the Savoy Theatre in 1881. In 1884, d'Oyly Carte built the Savoy Hotel on the adjacent site. Miss Couper-Black soon took over the management of all aspects of the theatre company's work both in the United States and in England. Apart from other duties, she arranged and produced lecture tours for speakers who included Matthew Arnold, Oscar Wilde and Whistler. It is tempting to believe the rehearsal pinpointed in Sickert's title was of Whistler's Ten O'Clock Lecture, several presentations of which Miss Couper-Black staged in 1885. In 1888 she became second wife of Richard d'Oyly Carte; after his death in 1901 she continued to manage the company alone, and was responsible for the modernisation of the Savoy Hotel. She died in 1913.
This painting is an early example of Sickert's arbitrary use of titles. Its original title, reminiscent of a ballet scene by Degas, was especially misleading. When it was shown in Brussels, L'Indépendence Belge (15 February 1887) followed the theatrical clue and interpreted it as 'l'épisode d'une actrice qui s'est jetée sur un sofa, dans sa loge, pour se reposer des fatigues et des émotions d'une situation dramatique de la fin de l'acte qu'elle vient de jouer'. On the other hand, when it was shown in London a short time before, the St James Gazette (1 December 1886) had described it in anecdotal, rather than dramatic, terms as 'a woman among the shadows of a half-lighted room, dropping her weary - or repentant - head on the back of a padded bench'. Perhaps this kind of interpretation influenced Sickert to rename the painting on its exhibition in 1895. This time the identification is proved by D.S. MacColl's description in The Spectator (2 March 1895): 'Take the study frivolously named Despair, which is one of the best bits of painting in the gallery. The sense of design in it has been almost inert. A hand makes an awkward patch on the top of the the girl's head. The sofa is clumsily plumped into place, the shaving glass sticks up stupidly behind.' The painting is now known as The Acting Manager, the title of an earlier etched portrait, dated 1884 and shown at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition of 1885, of Miss Couper-Black who had indeed pursued an acting career (as Miss Helen Lenoir) before joining the d'Oyly Carte Company. Only the sitter and the lamplit effects of the interior are common to both etching and painting.
MacColl's throw-away description of the design of this painting was the spring-board for a perceptive analysis of Sickert's preoccupation with 'atmospheric substance': 'the illumination of the air on a gaslit stage, or of a room with daylight falling down into it, the foggy emergence of objects in such lights, these are what fascinate Mr Sickert's eye'. In Despair, everything was 'bathed in an extraordinarily true illumination and atmosphere. The composition was not considered, the painter was wrapped up in the other affair.'
MacColl wrote in 1895 with the benefit of hindsight. He was describing the established painter of music-halls, not the young pupil of Whistler struggling ten years earlier with a complex project. The composition, far from being unconsidered, was the consequence of Sickert's ambitious attempt to express a human emotion (despair, frustration) within the formula of an intimate Whistlerian portrait study. The contrived profile presentation of the figure refers to Whistler's earlier portraits of Thomas Carlyle (City Art Gallery, Glasgow) and of his Mother (Musée du Louvre, Paris), the planar presentation of the couch to Whistler's portrait of Mrs Walter Sickert of 1885-86; with such references in mind, the shaving mirror is an awkward intrusion, the gesture of the sitter awkwardly histrionic. Yet now, from a distance not of ten but of over 100 years, The Acting Manager can be recognised as providing an unexpected foretaste of Sickert's later themes and vocabulary' (see W. Baron, Royal Academy exhibition catalogue, London, 1993, p. 62).
The present composition is discussed by Dr Wendy Baron in the 1992 exhibition catalogue; 'A portrait study of Miss Helen Couper-Black, general manager of the d'Oyly Carte Theatre Company, collapsed on a sofa in exhaustion.
The sitter had joined the company as secretary in 1877, the year Richard d'Oyly Carte took over the Opera Comique to found his own organisation. This became above all renowned for its presentations of the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan, for which d'Oyly Carte built the Savoy Theatre in 1881. In 1884, d'Oyly Carte built the Savoy Hotel on the adjacent site. Miss Couper-Black soon took over the management of all aspects of the theatre company's work both in the United States and in England. Apart from other duties, she arranged and produced lecture tours for speakers who included Matthew Arnold, Oscar Wilde and Whistler. It is tempting to believe the rehearsal pinpointed in Sickert's title was of Whistler's Ten O'Clock Lecture, several presentations of which Miss Couper-Black staged in 1885. In 1888 she became second wife of Richard d'Oyly Carte; after his death in 1901 she continued to manage the company alone, and was responsible for the modernisation of the Savoy Hotel. She died in 1913.
This painting is an early example of Sickert's arbitrary use of titles. Its original title, reminiscent of a ballet scene by Degas, was especially misleading. When it was shown in Brussels, L'Indépendence Belge (15 February 1887) followed the theatrical clue and interpreted it as 'l'épisode d'une actrice qui s'est jetée sur un sofa, dans sa loge, pour se reposer des fatigues et des émotions d'une situation dramatique de la fin de l'acte qu'elle vient de jouer'. On the other hand, when it was shown in London a short time before, the St James Gazette (1 December 1886) had described it in anecdotal, rather than dramatic, terms as 'a woman among the shadows of a half-lighted room, dropping her weary - or repentant - head on the back of a padded bench'. Perhaps this kind of interpretation influenced Sickert to rename the painting on its exhibition in 1895. This time the identification is proved by D.S. MacColl's description in The Spectator (2 March 1895): 'Take the study frivolously named Despair, which is one of the best bits of painting in the gallery. The sense of design in it has been almost inert. A hand makes an awkward patch on the top of the the girl's head. The sofa is clumsily plumped into place, the shaving glass sticks up stupidly behind.' The painting is now known as The Acting Manager, the title of an earlier etched portrait, dated 1884 and shown at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition of 1885, of Miss Couper-Black who had indeed pursued an acting career (as Miss Helen Lenoir) before joining the d'Oyly Carte Company. Only the sitter and the lamplit effects of the interior are common to both etching and painting.
MacColl's throw-away description of the design of this painting was the spring-board for a perceptive analysis of Sickert's preoccupation with 'atmospheric substance': 'the illumination of the air on a gaslit stage, or of a room with daylight falling down into it, the foggy emergence of objects in such lights, these are what fascinate Mr Sickert's eye'. In Despair, everything was 'bathed in an extraordinarily true illumination and atmosphere. The composition was not considered, the painter was wrapped up in the other affair.'
MacColl wrote in 1895 with the benefit of hindsight. He was describing the established painter of music-halls, not the young pupil of Whistler struggling ten years earlier with a complex project. The composition, far from being unconsidered, was the consequence of Sickert's ambitious attempt to express a human emotion (despair, frustration) within the formula of an intimate Whistlerian portrait study. The contrived profile presentation of the figure refers to Whistler's earlier portraits of Thomas Carlyle (City Art Gallery, Glasgow) and of his Mother (Musée du Louvre, Paris), the planar presentation of the couch to Whistler's portrait of Mrs Walter Sickert of 1885-86; with such references in mind, the shaving mirror is an awkward intrusion, the gesture of the sitter awkwardly histrionic. Yet now, from a distance not of ten but of over 100 years, The Acting Manager can be recognised as providing an unexpected foretaste of Sickert's later themes and vocabulary' (see W. Baron, Royal Academy exhibition catalogue, London, 1993, p. 62).