J. Comyns Carr
Encyclopedia
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
drama and art critic, gallery director, author, poet, playwright and theatre manager.
Beginning his career as an art critic, Carr was a vigorous advocate for Pre-Raphaelite art and a vocal critic of the "short-sighted" art establishment. In 1877 he became a director of the Grosvenor Gallery
Grosvenor Gallery
The Grosvenor Gallery was an art gallery in London founded in 1877 by Sir Coutts Lindsay and his wife Blanche. Its first directors were J. Comyns Carr and Charles Hallé...
and promoting Pre-Raphaelite painters and other important exhibitors, such as James McNeill Whistler
James McNeill Whistler
James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American-born, British-based artist. Averse to sentimentality and moral allusion in painting, he was a leading proponent of the credo "art for art's sake". His famous signature for his paintings was in the shape of a stylized butterfly possessing a long stinger...
, Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement,...
and Edward Burne-Jones
Edward Burne-Jones
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet was a British artist and designer closely associated with the later phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who worked closely with William Morris on a wide range of decorative arts as a founding partner in Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, and Company...
. Ten years later he founded the rival New Gallery
New Gallery (London)
The New Gallery was an art gallery founded at 121 Regent Street W., London, in 1888 by J. Comyns Carr and Charles Edward Hallé. Carr and Hallé had been co-directors of Sir Coutts Lindsay's Grosvenor Gallery, but resigned from that troubled gallery in 1887....
.
Carr also wrote essays, books, plays, librettos, English-language adaptations of foreign works and stage adaptations of Dickens novels and classic tales like King Arthur and Faust.
Life and career
J. Comyns Carr was born in MaryleboneMarylebone
Marylebone is an affluent inner-city area of central London, located within the City of Westminster. It is sometimes written as St. Marylebone or Mary-le-bone....
, Middlesex
Middlesex
Middlesex is one of the historic counties of England and the second smallest by area. The low-lying county contained the wealthy and politically independent City of London on its southern boundary and was dominated by it from a very early time...
, England, the seventh of ten children. His parents were Jonathan Carr, a woollen draper, and his Irish wife, Catherine Grace Comyns. Kate Comyns Carr, his sister, became a portrait artist. He was educated at Bruce Castle School
Bruce Castle School
Bruce Castle School, at Bruce Castle, Tottenham, was a progressive school for boys established in 1827 as an extension of Rowland Hill's Hazelwood School at Edgbaston...
, Tottenham
Tottenham
Tottenham is an area of the London Borough of Haringey, England, situated north north east of Charing Cross.-Toponymy:Tottenham is believed to have been named after Tota, a farmer, whose hamlet was mentioned in the Domesday Book; hence Tota's hamlet became Tottenham...
, Middlesex
Middlesex
Middlesex is one of the historic counties of England and the second smallest by area. The low-lying county contained the wealthy and politically independent City of London on its southern boundary and was dominated by it from a very early time...
, from 1862 to 1865. He studied law at the University of London
University of London
-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...
and graduated in 1869, beginning to practise at the bar at the Inner Temple
Inner Temple
The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, commonly known as Inner Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court in London. To be called to the Bar and practise as a barrister in England and Wales, an individual must belong to one of these Inns...
, London. He soon gave up law for a career in journalism and became drama critic for the Echo.
In 1873 in Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
, Carr married author Alice Laura Vansittart née Strettell (1850–1927), a novelist and designer, in 1873. Alice designed the bold costume that Ellen Terry
Ellen Terry
Dame Ellen Terry, GBE was an English stage actress who became the leading Shakespearean actress in Britain. Among the members of her famous family is her great nephew, John Gielgud....
wore as Lady Macbeth, and in which John Singer Sargent
John Singer Sargent
John Singer Sargent was an American artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian era luxury. During his career, he created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings...
painted her in 1889. Sargent also painted Mrs. Comyns Carr in 1889 and several portraits of her sister, Alma, and illustrated Alma's Spanish and Italian Folk Songs in 1887. Carr and his wife had three children: Philip, Dorothy and Arthur
Arthur Strettell Comyns Carr
Arthur Strettell Comyns Carr was a British Liberal politician and lawyer.-Family and education:Comyns Carr was the son of J. Comyns Carr, a dramatist and art critic. His mother, Alice Laura Strettell was a novelist. He was born in Marylebone and educated at Winchester College and Trinity College,...
(a barrister
Barrister
A barrister is a member of one of the two classes of lawyer found in many common law jurisdictions with split legal professions. Barristers specialise in courtroom advocacy, drafting legal pleadings and giving expert legal opinions...
and Liberal
Liberal Party (UK)
The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties of the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a third party of negligible importance throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, before merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the present day...
Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
). Carr was a member of the Arts Club and the Garrick Club
Garrick Club
The Garrick Club is a gentlemen's club in London.-History:The Garrick Club was founded at a meeting in the Committee Room at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane on Wednesday 17 August 1831...
. He published two memoirs: Some Eminent Victorians (1908), and Coasting Bohemia (1914).
Carr died of cancer at the age of 67 at his home in South Kensington
South Kensington
South Kensington is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London. It is a built-up area located 2.4 miles west south-west of Charing Cross....
, London. He was buried in Highgate cemetery.
Art career
In 1873, Carr became an art critic for the Pall Mall GazettePall Mall Gazette
The Pall Mall Gazette was an evening newspaper founded in London on 7 February 1865 by George Murray Smith; its first editor was Frederick Greenwood...
. The same year, in The Globe, he wrote a series of widely-read articles about contemporary artists. Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement,...
took notice of these and befriended him. Carr was a strong critic of the art establishment, decrying what he saw as its short-sightedness. In 1875 He was engaged in 1875 by the influential French journal L'Art as its English editor. In 1881–83, he founded and edited Art and Letters. As the first editor from 1883-86 of The English Illustrated Magazine. He also wrote for a number of other journals including the Art Journal, Saturday Review, the Examiner, the World and the Manchester Guardian. Carr wrote books and articles about art championing the Pre-Raphaelite school of art, as well as monographic works on artists such as Edward Burne-Jones
Edward Burne-Jones
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet was a British artist and designer closely associated with the later phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who worked closely with William Morris on a wide range of decorative arts as a founding partner in Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, and Company...
, Frederick Walker
Frederick Walker
Frederick Walker may refer to:*Frederick Walker , explorer*Frederick Walker , painter and illustrator*Frederic John Walker , British naval officer*Frederic Walker , cricketer...
and Sir Hubert von Herkomer.
Carr and Charles Hallé were appointed co-directors of the Grosvenor Gallery
Grosvenor Gallery
The Grosvenor Gallery was an art gallery in London founded in 1877 by Sir Coutts Lindsay and his wife Blanche. Its first directors were J. Comyns Carr and Charles Hallé...
in 1877 by Sir Coutts Lindsay. The gallery promoted Pre-Raphaelite painters and exhibited provocative work. James McNeill Whistler
James McNeill Whistler
James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American-born, British-based artist. Averse to sentimentality and moral allusion in painting, he was a leading proponent of the credo "art for art's sake". His famous signature for his paintings was in the shape of a stylized butterfly possessing a long stinger...
, Rossetti and Burne-Jones exhibited frequently at the Grosvenor Gallery. In 1887, Carr and Hallé resigned from that gallery (which closed in 1890), after a dispute with Lindsay, and quickly founded the rival New Gallery
New Gallery (London)
The New Gallery was an art gallery founded at 121 Regent Street W., London, in 1888 by J. Comyns Carr and Charles Edward Hallé. Carr and Hallé had been co-directors of Sir Coutts Lindsay's Grosvenor Gallery, but resigned from that troubled gallery in 1887....
, capturing Burne-Jones and most of the Grosvenor Gallery's other important artists. Carr continued as co-director until 1908. He also wrote the introduction to the British section of the 1911 International Exhibition of Fine Arts at Rome and later was chosen as the English representative to the Art Congress.
Theatre career
Carr was also the author of dramatic works, beginning with several light comedies in the early 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, LondonPrincess's Theatre, London
The Princess's Theatre or Princess Theatre was a theatre in Oxford Street, London. The building opened in 1828 as the "Queen's Bazaar" and housed a diorama by Clarkson Stanfield and David Roberts. It was converted into a theatre and opened in 1836 as the Princess's Theatre, named for then Princess...
(1881); a stage adaptation of Far From the Madding Crowd
Far from the Madding Crowd
Far from the Madding Crowd is Thomas Hardy's fourth novel and his first major literary success. It originally appeared anonymously as a monthly serial in Cornhill Magazine, where it gained a wide readership. Critical notices were plentiful and mostly positive...
co-authored with Thomas Hardy (1881); Hugh Conway
Hugh Conway
Hugh Conway, the pen name of Frederick John Fargus , was an English novelist born in Bristol, the son of an auctioneer.-Early life:...
's Called Back (1884), which was very successful for the actor–manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree
Herbert Beerbohm Tree
Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree was an English actor and theatre manager.Tree began performing in the 1870s. By 1887, he was managing the Haymarket Theatre, winning praise for adventurous programming and lavish productions, and starring in many of its productions. In 1899, he helped fund the...
; 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
Charles King Hall
Charles King Hall , often credited as King Hall, was a versatile English composer of both sacred and secular music. He favored the sentimental ballad and the church anthem. He specialized in arranging for piano and voice the works of famous composers such as Gounod and Mendelssohn. In addition,...
); The Friar; and Forgiveness. At the Haymarket Theatre
Haymarket Theatre
The Theatre Royal Haymarket is a West End theatre in the Haymarket in the City of Westminster which dates back to 1720, making it the third-oldest London playhouse still in use...
from 1887 to 1893, Carr acted as Tree's literary adviser and partner.
Blank verse
Blank verse is poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. It has been described as "probably the most common and influential form that English poetry has taken since the sixteenth century" and Paul Fussell has claimed that "about three-quarters of all English poetry is in blank verse."The first...
play inspired by the writings of Thomas Malory
Thomas Malory
Sir Thomas Malory was an English writer, the author or compiler of Le Morte d'Arthur. The antiquary John Leland as well as John Bale believed him to be Welsh, but most modern scholars, beginning with G. L...
and Alfred Tennyson, as well as by the visual images of the Pre-Raphaelites, was produced by Henry Irving
Henry Irving
Sir Henry Irving , born John Henry Brodribb, was an English stage actor in the Victorian era, known as an actor-manager because he took complete responsibility for season after season at the Lyceum Theatre, establishing himself and his company as...
in the Lyceum Theatre. It starred Irving and Ellen Terry
Ellen Terry
Dame Ellen Terry, GBE was an English stage actress who became the leading Shakespearean actress in Britain. Among the members of her famous family is her great nephew, John Gielgud....
, with music composed by Arthur Sullivan
Arthur Sullivan
Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan MVO was an English composer of Irish and Italian ancestry. He is best known for his series of 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including such enduring works as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado...
and sets, costumes and artwork designed by Carr's friend Edward Burne-Jones. This spectacular production was a success for Irving and ran for over 100 performances, also touring North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
. Another play that year was Delia Harding, an adaptation of a Victorien Sardou
Victorien Sardou
Victorien Sardou was a French dramatist. He is best remembered today for his development, along with Eugène Scribe, of the well-made play...
play, at the Comedy Theatre. Also for Irving's company, in 1897 he produced and English version of Madame Sans-Gêne
Madame Sans-Gêne
Madame Sans-Gêne may refer to:*Marie-Thérèse Figueur , French female soldier*Cathérine Hübscher, wife of Marshal of France François Joseph Lefebvre, whose life has been dramatised in:...
by Sardou and Émile Moreau
Émile Moreau
Émile Moreau was a French playwright and screenwriter. In co-operation with Victorien Sardou, he wrote the plays Madame Sans-Gêne and Cleopatre . He also wrote the play Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth, and the script for its film adaptation, and was one of the co-founders of the Indian...
in 1897, which played on both sides of the Atlantic. Carr also dramatised The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1910, starring H. B. Irving at Queen's Theatre
Queen's Theatre
The Queen's Theatre is a West End theatre located in Shaftesbury Avenue in the City of Westminster. It opened on 8 October 1907 as a twin to the neighbouring Gielgud Theatre which opened ten months earlier. Both theatres were designed by W.G.R...
.
Carr collaborated with Arthur Wing Pinero
Arthur Wing Pinero
Sir Arthur Wing Pinero was an English actor and later an important dramatist and stage director.-Biography:...
and Arthur Sullivan on The Beauty Stone
The Beauty Stone
The Beauty Stone is an opera, billed as a "romantic musical drama" in three acts, composed by Arthur Sullivan to a libretto by Arthur Wing Pinero and J. Comyns Carr. The medieval Faustian story concerns an ugly, crippled girl, who dreams of being beautiful and meeting a handsome prince. The Devil...
, a comic opera
Comic opera
Comic opera denotes a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending.Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, opera buffa, emerged as an alternative to opera seria...
, at the Savoy Opera
Savoy opera
The Savoy Operas denote a style of comic opera that developed in Victorian England in the late 19th century, with W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan as the original and most successful practitioners. The name is derived from the Savoy Theatre, which impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte built to house...
in 1898. The theme was that "only through blindness can true love be realized," but the piece never found an audience. Carr's adaptation of Oliver Twist
Oliver Twist
Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress is the second novel by English author Charles Dickens, published by Richard Bentley in 1838. The story is about an orphan Oliver Twist, who endures a miserable existence in a workhouse and then is placed with an undertaker. He escapes and travels to...
was produced by Herbert Beerbohm Tree
Herbert Beerbohm Tree
Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree was an English actor and theatre manager.Tree began performing in the 1870s. By 1887, he was managing the Haymarket Theatre, winning praise for adventurous programming and lavish productions, and starring in many of its productions. In 1899, he helped fund the...
at His Majesty's Theatre
His Majesty's Theatre
His Majesty's Theatre in Aberdeen is the largest theatre in north-east Scotland, seating more than 1400. The theatre is sited on Rosemount Viaduct, opposite the city's Union Terrace Gardens. It was designed by Frank Matcham and opened in 1906...
, London (1905). It was also produced on Broadway in 1905 and 1912. From 1899 to 1904, after Irving transferred control of the Lyceum, Carr managed the theatre.
Carr's Tristram and Iseult (1906), a pseudo-medieval drama, was produced at the Adelphi Theatre
Adelphi Theatre
The Adelphi Theatre is a 1500-seat West End theatre, located on the Strand in the City of Westminster. The present building is the fourth on the site. The theatre has specialised in comedy and musical theatre, and today it is a receiving house for a variety of productions, including many musicals...
starring Matheson Lang
Matheson Lang
Matheson Alexander Lang was a Canadian-born stage and film actor and playwright in the early 20th century. He is best remembered for his performances roles in Great Britain in Shakespeare plays.-Biography:...
, Lily Brayton
Lily Brayton
Elizabeth "Lily" Brayton was an English actress, known for her performances in Shakespeare plays and for her nearly 2,000 performances in the World War I hit musical Chu Chin Chow.-Early years:...
and Oscar Asche
Oscar Asche
John Stange Heiss Oscar Asche , better known as Oscar Asche, was an Australian actor, director and writer, best known for having written, directed, and acted in the record-breaking musical Chu Chin Chow, both on stage and film, and for acting in, directing, or producing many Shakespeare plays and...
. An adaptation of Dickens' The Mystery of Edwin Drood
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
The Mystery of Edwin Drood is the final novel by Charles Dickens. The novel was left unfinished at the time of Dickens' death, and his intended ending for it remains unknown. Though the novel is named after the character Edwin Drood, the story focuses on Drood's uncle, choirmaster John Jasper, who...
(1907) was produced by Tree in Cardiff. 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. This was followed by an adaptation of Goethe's Faust
Goethe's Faust
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust is a tragic play in two parts: and . Although written as a closet drama, it is the play with the largest audience numbers on German-language stages...
, for Tree in 1908, in collaboration with Stephen Phillips
Stephen Phillips
Stephen Phillips was a highly famed English poet and dramatist, who enjoyed considerable popularity in his lifetime....
.
At the Covent Garden Theatre in 1913–14, Carr was artistic adviser. A fan of Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
, Carr was responsible for the first English performance of Wagner's Parsifal
Parsifal
Parsifal is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. It is loosely based on Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, the 13th century epic poem of the Arthurian knight Parzival and his quest for the Holy Grail, and on Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, the Story of the Grail.Wagner first conceived the work...
in 1914 at Covent Garden.
Books by 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
- Exhibition of Works of Sir Edward Burne-Jones 1898
- Some Eminent Victorians; Personal Recollections in the World of Art and Letters, 1908
- Coasting Bohemia, 1914
- The Ideals of Painting, 1917 (published posthumously).