English Theatrical Portraits

The collection contains portraits produced to promote actors and plays in English Theatre. There are 138 etchings of actors or actors as a character in a play. The prints are pasted onto boards, one per board. The majority of images have the name of the actor or the name of the role the actor played engraved as a caption on the print. This information may also include the name of the engraver and the name of the person who created the original drawing of the portrait. The captions may also include the venue, such as the Theatre Royal Covent Garden. Others are identified by handwritten captions. For instance, one image lists Tyrone Power as the actor, with Thomas Woolnoth as the engraver of the work. Other images have the name of the actor and play handwritten in pencil and ink. The materials are arranged according to actor last name, character name, and unnamed or unmarked portraits.

Actors and artists include Frances Maria Kelly (1790-1882), Samuel De Wilde (1748-1832), William Satchwell Leney (1769-1831), John Braham(1774-1856), Alexander Pope (1763-1835), Daniel Egerton(1772-1835), Tyrone Power(1797-1841), Thomas Woonoth (b.1785), William Blanchard (1769-1835), Margaret Agnes Bunn (1799-1883), Henry Edwards (1798-1885), James Sheridan Knowles (1784-1862), William Charles Macready (1793-1873). John Reeve (1799-1838), Lucia Elizabeth Bartolozzi Vestris (1797-1856), and John R. Walner.