A Victorian Eye by Rory Fellowes at Jermyn Street

Atlantic Screen Productions presents A Victorian Eye, by Rory Fellowes, at the Jermyn Street Theatre, a 70-seat Off West End venue in Piccadilly, central London 30 July to 17 Aug 2013.

Directed by Maureen Payne-Hahner, designed by Tim Dann, lighting by David W. Kidd, costumes by Lyn Avery. Nigel Dunbar plays Sir William Blake Richmond R.A.

Charts the work and life of artist Sir William Blake Richmond R.A, from his studio, revealing the beliefs and adventures that formed him, his loves and tragic losses and his own thoughts on art, religion and politics. It also reveals the sadness of a great talent undermined by fashionable opinion.

During the late years of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth century, Sir William Blake Richmond R.A. was one of the leading English artists of his day. Famed for his pictures of all the prominent families of Britain including the Royal Family. In addition to his vast panoramas based on Greek mythology and the many landscapes of his travels in Europe and North Africa, he designed stained glass windows around the country, and was an accomplished sculptor, carving, amongst others, the grave of William and Catherine Gladstone and The Athlete in St. Peter’s Square, Hammersmith. His long and distinguished career culminated in the greatest commission any artist in England might have wished for, the decoration of St. Paul’s Cathedral, a masterpiece that took him thirteen years. But as he worked on this masterpiece the world turned, and everything he stood for in art was set aside by the sudden surge into Modernism, led then by the French Post-Impressionists, his bitterest rivals in a world that no longer recognised his ideals or appreciated his skills.

- by Darren Dalglish