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Updated: June 17, 2025
Ralph was in his element, putting up a little stage, drilling boys, arranging groups, and uniting in himself carpenter, scene-painter, manager, and gas man. Mrs. Minot permitted the house to be turned topsy-turvy, and Mrs. Pecq flew about, lending a hand everywhere. Jill was costumer, with help from Miss Delano, who did not care for balls, and kindly took charge of the girls.
But what a compliment that was to the whole corps, actors, actresses, and scene-painter! and how impossible it would be to make the same complaint of an English play! "But," I have been told by theatrical people, "such an arrangement is all very well in French vaudevilles, where one scene lasts through an act; but it will not do for English plays, with their constant scene-shifting."
As a scene-painter, De Loutherbourg was decidedly an innovator and reformer. He was the first to use set-scenes, and what are technically known as 'raking pieces. Before his time the back scene was invariably one large 'flat' of strained canvas extending the whole breadth and height of the stage.
For the same theatre, John Richards, a Royal Academician, appointed secretary to the Academy in 1778, painted scenes for many years. Michael Angelo Rooker, pupil of Paul Sanby, and one of the first Associates of the Academy, was scene-painter at the Haymarket.
In the background is a scenic representation of a pastoral landscape, on which all the skill of the scene-painter is expended. Shepherds guard their flocks far away, reposing under palm-trees or standing on green slopes which glow in the sunshine. The distances and perspective are admirable.
There was something in the fellow's look which invited me, and when I got into conversation with him, I learned that nothing but jealousy had kept him from taking a high place as a scene-painter, and that artists of far less merit than himself had a place, year after year, on the line at the Academy.
The Frenchman followed the movements of Francis, in such a state of bewilderment that he actually forgot to seize the opportunity of shutting out the fresh air. 'Is it so nasty as that? he asked, with a broad stare of amazement. 'Horrible! Francis muttered behind his handkerchief. 'I never smelt anything like it in my life! There was a knock at the door. The scene-painter appeared.
In the hands of a scene-painter they would yield a really unrivalled drop-curtain. I stick to the notion of this because when the beautiful goes too far, as it certainly does at Madeira, it leaves you not only sated but vindictive; you wish to mock it.
If you unite in your own person the artist and the player; if you occasionally handle the painter's brush as well as the field-marshal's truncheon for have I not seen you lead the British troops with heroic valour through the awful passes of Cabul, which I had seen you creating with lamp-black and grey chalks in the morning? it will only prove that your genius is universal, or, at least, not limited to one mode of development; but that, as D'Israeli is an orator and a statesman, you are a scene-painter and performer.
All was reflected in the pools which lay like glass whereon a scene-painter had cut the green hearts of the pond-lily leaves. An adorable country glimpse which seemed to have been created centuries back for the amusement of a queen and preserved, immaculately trimmed and cleaned, from generation to generation, for the eternal charm of such an hour as this on the banks of the Gulf of Finland.
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