Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

3 THE ART AND “MYSTERY” OF SCENE-PAINTING. 301 I Photo: Cassell & Co., Ltd. A SCENE-PAINTER AT WORK (MR. JOSEPH HARKER). each. How the change came about, whether it was that the modem system of long runs made it have its we need A scene price is assistants the no the ac- handle long enough to permit of his stand- ing- over his work. The inconveniences of this modus operandi are obvious enough. In the first place, the work could only be done in a building with a large superficial area. The Covent Garden Opera House requires scenes seventy feet long by forty feet broad, and though the stage of Covent Garden is the largest in this country, scenes for an average theatre have to be some forty feet by thirty-five feet. The position, too, was an awkward and tiring one for the painter, who must have known excellently well what backache also reduced to the treading his work all these drawbacks simple expedient of in the floor, through tachecl to a frame, is raised or lowered so as to bring that part of it which is being operated upon at the moment on a level with the painter’s arm. It is still necessary, of course, that the painter should have a fairly lofty building to work in, but he requires comparatively little floor space. In Macklin Street, between Holborn and Drury Lane, a large warehouse has been converted into painting rooms by two well-known scenic artists. means, and who was painful necessity of under foot. Now are avoided by the a windlass and a slit which the canvas, at- Other scene- Almost the this rule is Drury Lane, enormous structure that it for at least some of are presently to grace on the premises.” Lane, indeed, there is room Other theatres have to in railway arches, and readers will doubtless so very long ago a uneconomical for a theatre to permanent staff of scene-painters, not stop to inquire, but so it is. is offered to a given artist, a agreed upon, and he, with his and pupils, turns out the work. Another change, consequent upon one just indicated, is that the work is longer for the most part done in theatres, but in buildings rented or quired by the various artists, and by them adapted to their requirements, only exception to which is such an there is room in the scenes that the stage to be painted At Drury for everything, store their scenes so forth, and my remember how not fire in one of these arches wrought havoc among the beautiful scenes which Sir Henrv Irving had accumulated ; but Drury Lane is able to provide its own storage, although, as may be supposed, its stock of scenes and “ properties ” is on the most gigantic scale. This leads me to speak of yet another change that has come over the “ mystery ” of scene - painting. Formerly the canvas was spread on the floor, and the artist iracecl his designs with a brush having a Photo: Cassell & Co., GRINDING THE COLOURS.