Illustrators take to the stage

On the evening of 27 April 1848, at St James’s Theatre in London, a special charity performance of Colman’s comedy The Heir-at-Law took place, to raise funds for the Artists’ General Benevolent Institution (founded 1814 and still in existence today). It was billed as an ‘Artists’ Amateur Performance’, and all the male roles were taken by artists and illustrators such as George Cruikshank, the lithographer Robert Jacob Hamerton, the engraver Francis Holl, a young John Tenniel, the landscape painter T. W. Angell, the engraver and watercolourist Francis William Topham, and the painter James Digman Wingfield.  The female parts were taken by professional actors. The band also featured artists, e.g. the illustrator Henry Courtney Selous playing cello.

At the forthcoming New York Book Fair, I shall be exhibiting an original playbill for the performance:

For more details of this, and other things I shall be bringing to the fair, please take a look at my fair list.