Our Artwork Collection dates back to when the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre housed its own picture gallery for the people of Stratford-upon-Avon in 1881 of both paintings and sculpture.
With paintings by Sir Walter Sickert and Sir Antony Sher, our artwork collection can be considered in three categories: portraits of Shakespeare, scenes from Shakespeare plays and actors as Shakespeare characters.
We have 13 individual portraits of Shakespeare alone in our artwork collection. Our most famous Shakespeare portrait is the "Flower Portrait", named after Mrs Charles Flower, who donated it to the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. It was claimed by to be the original portrait from which the engraving by Droeshout in the front of the First Folio was produced.
One of our most recognisable paintings is The Weird Sisters: Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 3 by Henry Fuseli, 1783. A painting which explores the supernatural world in which Shakespeare’s play Macbeth is set. It shows an opening scene, where three witches, or weird sisters, foretell the character Macbeth’s future as king.
Peggy Ashcroft was an actor who worked extensively with the RSC throughout her career and one of our paintings, by Ethel Leonine Gabain, depicts her as the infamous character, Juliet. It shows her in an orange velvet dress she wore in 1935, one of many dresses we have that she has worn that we also have in our Costume Collection.
Other painters in our collection:
- Sir Antony Sher
- Dame Laura Knight
- Frederick William Davis
- Victor Muller
- Angelica Kauffman
- John Everett Millais
- Fuseli
- George Frederic Watts
Actors featured in artwork:
- Ben Kingsley
- Anthony Quayle
- Dame Edith Evans
- David Garrick
- Ellen Terry
- Frank Benson
- Sir Henry Irving
- Laurence Olivier
- Sir Michael Redgrave
- David Warner
- Sir Antony Sher
You can explore more artworks from the RSC Collection online at Art UK