J. Comyns Carr

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"An Art Critic"
February 1893 caricature by Spy (Leslie Ward) in Vanity Fair

Joseph William Comyns Carr (1 March 1849 – 12 December 1916), often referred to as J. Comyns Carr, was an English drama and art critic, gallery director, author, poet, playwright and theatre manager.

Beginning his career as an art critic, Carr was a vigorous advocate for Pre-Raphaelite art and a vocal critic of the "short-sighted" art establishment. In 1877 he became a director of the Grosvenor Gallery and promoting Pre-Raphaelite painters and other important exhibitors, such as James McNeill Whistler, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones. Ten years later he founded the rival New Gallery.

Carr also wrote essays, books, plays, librettos, English-language adaptations of foreign works and stage adaptations of Dickens novels and classic tales like King Arthur and Faust.

Early life and family

J. Comyns Carr was born in Marylebone, Middlesex, England, the seventh of ten children. His parents were Jonathan Carr, a woollen draper, and his Irish wife, Catherine Grace Comyns. Kate Comyns Carr, his sister, became a portrait artist; his brother Jonathan Carr developed the world's first garden suburb Bedford Park.[1] Comyns Carr was educated at Bruce Castle School, Tottenham, Middlesex, from 1862 to 1865.[2] He studied law at the University of London and graduated in 1869, beginning to practise at the bar at the Inner Temple, London.[3] He soon gave up law for a career in journalism and became drama critic for the Echo.[4]

In 1873 in

Arts Club and the Garrick Club. He published two memoirs: Some Eminent Victorians (1908), and Coasting Bohemia (1914).[6]

Career

Art

Carr in the 1910s

In 1873, Carr became an art critic for the

Sir Hubert von Herkomer.[2]

Carr and Charles Hallé were appointed co-directors of the Grosvenor Gallery in 1877 by Sir Coutts Lindsay. The gallery promoted Pre-Raphaelite painters and exhibited provocative work.[2] James McNeill Whistler, Rossetti and Burne-Jones exhibited frequently at the Grosvenor Gallery. In 1887, Carr and Hallé resigned from that gallery (which closed in 1890), after a dispute with Lindsay, and quickly founded the rival New Gallery, capturing Burne-Jones and most of the Grosvenor Gallery's other important artists.[4] Carr continued as co-director until 1908. He also wrote the introduction to the British section of the 1911 International Exhibition of Fine Arts at Rome and later was chosen as the English representative to the Art Congress.[2]

Theatre

Carr was also the author of dramatic works, beginning with several light comedies in the early 1880s for the

Haymarket Theatre
from 1887 to 1893, Carr acted as Tree's literary adviser and partner.

Scene from King Arthur

Carr leased the

H. B. Irving at Queen's Theatre.[8]

Carr collaborated with

His Majesty's Theatre, London (1905).[10] It was also produced on Broadway in 1905 and 1912.[11] From 1899 to 1904, after Irving transferred control of the Lyceum, Carr managed the theatre.[2]

Carr's Tristram and Iseult (1906), a pseudo-medieval drama, was produced at the Adelphi Theatre starring Matheson Lang, Lily Brayton and Oscar Asche. An adaptation of Dickens' The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1907) was produced by Tree in Cardiff. Carr's theory of the play was that Jasper, under the influence of opium, attempted to act upon his murderous impulses, but Drood, overhearing his uncle's ravings, was able to escape.[12] This was followed by an adaptation of Goethe's Faust, for Tree in 1908, in collaboration with Stephen Phillips.[2]

At the Royal Opera House in 1913–14, Carr was artistic adviser. A fan of Richard Wagner, Carr was responsible for the first English performance of Wagner's Parsifal in 1914 at Covent Garden.[2]

Mrs. J. W. Comyns Carr, John Singer Sargent, c. 1889

Death

Carr died of cancer at the age of 67 at his home in South Kensington, London. He was buried in Highgate Cemetery.[citation needed]

Books by Carr

Notes

  1. ^ Casteras, p. 184, n. 12
  2. ^
    doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/46761
  3. The Inquirer and Commercial News
     (Western Australia), vol. LV, issue 3037, 28 June 1895, p. 6, accessed 16 August 2021, via Trove
  4. ^ a b c d Biography of Carr at the Whistler website Archived 15 June 2004 at the Wayback Machine
  5. ^ Painting of Alice Vansittart Comyns Carr
  6. ^ Vansittart (1920), p. 1
  7. ^ "King Arthur"[permanent dead link] at The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive, 10 September 2010
  8. ^ Information about Carr's version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
  9. ^ Information about The Beauty Stone Archived 20 July 2008 at the Wayback Machine
  10. ^ Photo from Oliver Twist Archived 4 February 2009 at the Wayback Machine
  11. ^ IBDB profile of Oliver Twist
  12. ^ Information about Carr's Mystery of Edwin Drood
  13. ^ "Review of Essays on Art by J. Comyns Carr". The Quartertly Journal. 149: 47–83. January 1880.

References

  • Bénézit, E., Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs, 8 vols, Paris, 1956–61.
  • Carr, Alice Vansittart Strettell. J. Comyns Carr: Stray Memories by His Wife, London, 1920 (available online here)
  • Carr, Alice Vansittart Strettell. Mrs. J. Comyns Carr's Reminiscences, ed. E. Adam, London, 1926.
  • Carr, J. C. Some eminent Victorians: personal recollections in the world of art and letters (1908)
  • Carr, J. C. Coasting Bohemia (1914)
  • Casteras, Susan P., Colleen Denney (eds.) The Grosvenor Gallery: A Palace of Art in Victorian England, Yale University Press (1996)
    ISBN 0300067526
  • Ward, Humphrey Thomas. .(Men of the Time: A Dictionary of Contemporaries, G. Routledge and sons, London 1887

External links

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J. Comyns Carr
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