Grant Macdonald, Laurence Olivier in Oedipius Rex, 1945, ink and watercolour on paper (33-006.067). Photo credit: Hal Roth
Exhibitions
Bright Particular Stars: The Theatre Portraits of Grant Macdonald (1909-1987)
The Davies Foundation Gallery
12 October 2006 - 14 January 2007
"...will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used; for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time..." (Hamlet II, ii)
In 1990, The McLean Foundation generously funded the Art Centre's acquisition of some 500 theatre portraits by Canadian artist Grant Macdonald, left in his estate following his death in Kingston in 1987. Ranging from modest pencil sketches to large-scale watercolours and gouaches, this significant corpus traces a vast panorama of theatre greats who dominated the British, American and Canadian stages from the 1930s to the 1960s.
Bright Particular Stars brings together some 60 works from this collection to capture some of theatre's great moments: Tallulah Bankhead's 1939 breakthrough Broadway performance in The Little Foxes; Laurence Olivier in the 1945 Old Vic staging of Oedipus Rex; Edith Evans as Mrs Malaprop in the 1945 London production of The Rivals; and Mary Martin's record 1949-1954 New York run in South Pacific.
Macdonald deftly evoked the personalities of both his sitters and the characters they played. Acutely observed, candid, and often quickly drawn, their appeal lays in their spontaneity, born of both the artist's skill and his ties to his subject, many of whom he knew as friends. Through them, he affords us a glimpse of the sophistication, wit and style of a Golden Age of English-language theatre on two continents.
Janet M. Brooke
This Art Centre touring exhibition is organized and circulated with additional support from The McLean Foundation.