Sarah Bernhardt

French actress. Née Rosine Sarah Bernhardt. Born 22 October 1822, Paris, France. Married M Damala (actor), 1882. Died 26 March 1923, Paris, France.

 On stage in France, England, Australia and America. Visited Australia during 1891 as part of a world tour.

Riley/Hailes Scrapbook, pages 197, 285.

Bertram mackennal was fascinated by the theatre and theatricals throughout his working life. Australia’s first world-class sculptor was born at Fitzroy, Melbourne in 1863, son of Scottish immigrant parents, his father John Simpson Mackennal becoming an established archtectural sculptor in Australia in the 1860s/70s, and Bertram’s first teacher in his studio.

In 1878 he started studies at the School of Design of the National Gallery of Victoria, where fellow students included another sculptor, Charles Douglas Richardson and artists Tom Roberts, Frederick McCubbin and Rupert Bunny, and in 1881-82 Mackennal, Richardson and Roberts left Melbourne for London.

Bertram Mackennal, 1924. Photo by Walter Stoneman.

National Portrait Gallery, London.

The Lyric Muse, 1888, by Bertram Mackennal

Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

To London and Paris

There the three young men shared a studio and Bertram met several of Britain’s leading sculptors, including Hamo Thorneycroft and Alfred Gilbert, plus members of the emerging group of New Sculptors, including Harry Bates and George Frampton. Australian artists with whom Mackennal socialised in London (and later Paris) included Roberts, Bunny, John Longstaff, Arthur Streeton and ‘Anglo-Australians’ Phil May and Charles Conder.

In 1883 Mackennal studied at the British Museum and started at the Royal Academy schools. His first known work was of his friend and fellow sculptor, Charles Douglas Richardson. During the following five years he left London for Paris, where, probably in 1888, he met and worked in the studio of Auguste Rodin, introduced by the Australian impressionist John Peter Russell.

In 1884 he married Agnes Spooner and the following year their daughter Henrietta was born. In England in 1888 he produced the first of a long line of theatrically-related works, a delightful bronze head of Euterpe, The Lyric Muse. Appropriately she is the muse of poetry and music, joy and pleasure, and is often represented, crowned with flowers, holding an instrument, in this case a lyre.

Head of a Woman [Mary Anderson], 1888, by Bertram Mackennal

Private collection

Mary Anderson as Galatea in Pygmalion and Galatea, 1884. Photo by Henry Van der Weyde, London.

National Portrait Gallery, London

Also in 1888, Mackennal, twenty-five years old, sculpted busts of two great American actresses who were appearing in seasons in London. First came Mary Anderson (1859-1940), who played both Hermione and Perdita in Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Talefor 166 nights at the Lyceum Theatre—by far the longest run of that play, before or since. She was a major celebrity. The Morning Post earlier described her appearance in glowing terms:

Miss Anderson’s beauty is of a Grecian type, with a head of classic contour, finely chiseled features, and a tall statuesque figure, whose Hellenic expression a graceful costume of antique design sets off to best advantage.

Mackennal’s portrait, executed twice,¹ echoes this description, the head confidently modelled. Born at Sacramento, California, as a child Mary Anderson was inspired by Edwin Booth’s Richard III, and her first role was Juliet. She continued with Shakespeare in London, where she became a great favourite. At the time of the sitting for Mackennal, he was working as a designer for the Coalport china company in Shropshire, from where he would visit friends – and work—in London from time to time.

Marble bust of Genevieve Ward, attributed to American sculptor Joel Tanner Hart (1810-1877)

Royal Shakespeare Company collection

Genevieve Ward in Forget-Me-Not, c.1880

From Genevieve Ward: A biographical sketch, Osgood, Boston, 1882

The second great American actress to be sculpted by Mackennal in 1888 was Genevieve Ward(1832-1922), who followed Anderson at the Lyceum in a new play, The Loadstone, specially written for her but unappreciated by the London press.

Born in New York a generation before Anderson, Ward was educated in France and Italy and had career as an opera singer before marrying a Russian aristocrat, Count Guerbel, and switching her attentions to drama. She became famous in England as Lady Macbeth, Volumnia in Coriolanusand Queen Margaret in Richard III.

She toured Australia for Williamson, Garner and Musgrove in 1884-85, opening at the Princess Theatre in Melbourne in Merivale’s comedy Forget-Me-Not, followed by Sydney Grundy’s The Queen’s Favourite, later becoming a celebrated Lady Macbeth.

Finally retiring aged 82, Ward was the first actress to be created DBE. Genevieve Ward’s name appears on the list of Mackennal’s sculptures made by his grandson, Colin Kraay, but its whereabouts is currently unknown.

Return to Melbourne

In 1888, Mackennal and his family returned to Australia so that he could fulfill a commission to execute relief panels for the façade of the Victorian State Parliament.

The fact that Mackennal had made busts of such major theatrical stars as Anderson and Ward may well have given him the credibility to approach others in Melbourne. The sculptor quickly became part of the vibrant artistic and theatrical scene there. In her memoirs, Mackennal’s daughter Henrietta observed:

Life in Melbourne seemed very exciting and my parents met many interesting people. We were living in a colony of artists, writers and theatricals. They told me that there were excellent plays at the Princess Theatre.²

Mackennal rented a small flat and studio on Swanston Street in Melbourne and appears frequently in the letters of the artist Tom Roberts during this time. Arthur Streeton wrote later that while Mackennal was in Australia the sculptor had hosted Bohemian suppers on the last Friday of each month—a young English actress, Janet Achurch, among the guests, as well as Streeton, Conder and Felix Meyer.³

Plaster and terracotta relief of Janet Achurch, c.1890, by Bertram Mackennal

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Janet Achurch as Nora in A Doll’s House, 1890. Photo by Falk [Walter Barnett], Sydney.

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

It was while living in Swanston Street that Bertram Mackennal created his portrait of Janet Achurch (1854-1916). She was a well-regarded young English actress from a theatrical family. Her first engagement had been with Genevieve Ward’s company in London and her range extended from the Fairy Queen in pantomime to Lady Macbeth. However, it was in the year prior to the creation of Mackennal’s portrait that Achurch became famous—with the opening of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House in London in June 1889.

The actress’s naturalistic portrayal of the proto-feminist Nora created both shock and admiration. Before the opening, Achurch and her husband, the actor Charles Charrington, had signed a two-year contract with the Australian theatrical triumvirate of Williamson, Garner and Musgrove, and it was their future Australian salaries that the couple mortgaged in order to première A Doll’s House in London.

Charrington and Achurch toured Australia and New Zealand from September 1889 to August 1891, becoming closely involved with the artistic communities in both Melbourne and Sydney. Charles Conder met her in Melbourne and according to Table Talk was commissioned to paint her (now untraced, possibly unexecuted) portrait.⁴ The Sydney-based photographer Walter Barnett, another friend of Mackennal, took a number of portrait photographs of her. Arthur Streeton met and became friendly with the actress and her husband—Streeton gave her his painting of Coogee Bay in Sydney. He wrote to Tom Roberts:

... I go and dine at Charringtons, at Woollahra, very often. They are fine people. She is a very artistic woman & all Sydney is running after her now…She is the most earnest professional woman I have ever met.⁵

The reaction of the press in London to this controversial play had filtered quickly to the colonies and the couple and their play already had a contentious reputation when they arrived in Australia. It caused rowdy scenes at the Princess Theatre in Melbourne when it opened on 14 September 1889.⁶

There are three known versions of Mackennal’s portrayal of Janet Achurch.⁷ All are relief portraits. Notable are a number of formal similarities with his later portrait of Sarah Bernhardt. Like the Bernhardt, Mackennal depicted Achurch in profile facing left. The artist’s text and lettering style is similar, inscribed vertically in front of the actress’s face. While the Bernhardt work is executed in low relief, the Achurch portrait is formed and in high relief. There are also differences in the conception of the portraits. Achurch is presented simply as a woman wearing a toga-like garment. Mackennal’s depiction of Bernhardt is more sophisticated, for with her fashionable contemporary dress, symbolic figure and heavy-lidded eyes she is presented as a modern woman.

Mrs Brown Potter, 1901, by Australian artist Theodora Cowan (1868-1949)

Tatler (London), 15 October 1901

Mrs Brown Potter, 1890. Photo by Falk [Walter Barnett], Sydney.

Falk Album, Theatre Heritage Australia

During the same year (1890), Mackennal also made a portrait bust, untraced, of the American actress, Cora Brown Potter (1859-1936), who was also touring Australia for the ‘triumvirate’, with her leading man, Kyrle Bellew (1855-1911). Born in New Orleans to a wealthy family, Mary Cora Urquhart married the New Yorker James Brown Potter in 1877 when she was eighteen. Cora became a leading member of the New York social set, in demand at parties for her beauty and her talent for recitations. In London in the summer of 1886, Mrs Brown Potter met Bellew, an English actor who had previously been a prospector on the Australian goldfields. Leaving her husband, she began a career on the stage with Bellew, a long and successful partnership. Together they undertook extensive world tours and it was while they were in Australia in 1890 that Brown Potter and Bellew met Mackennal.

Although in their dramatic styles the two actresses were quite different—Achurch the modern naturalist, Brown Potter the melodramatic beauty—it is noticeable that in other ways Brown Potter and Achurch had unexpected similarities: their plays and performances were contentious, and both represented the independently-minded ‘New Woman’. Nellie Stewart, a prominent Australian actor-singer of this period, described Brown Potter in her autobiography, My Life’s Story:

Mrs Brown-Potter was very beautiful in her slender and somewhat sinister style, but I don’t suppose that anybody will seriously pretend that she was a great actress.... Her voice, naturally husky… she worked to the point of stridency. She clothed her lithe body in such a way as to give an effect of snakiness. Long before the cinema, she was the first of the vampires.⁸

Table Talk applauded the new Mackennal work: ‘When Mrs Potter’s face is in repose the strength of purpose and determination show more strongly than when the features are softened by a smile, and Mr Mackennal has caught the more lasting expression admirably.’ The same publication later linked Mackennal’s portrait of the American actress to his next commission from a performing artist:

Mrs Brown-Potter’s arrival in Australia found him [Mackennal] an enthusiastic and discerning patron, and the beautiful actress gave him sittings for a bust, into which the young sculptor put some of his best work... After a sojourn in Paris, where Madame Bernhardt was as good as her promise to stand by him, he settled in London, and was invited by Mrs Potter to act as a sort of caretaker-guest for her London home during her absence on her second Australian tour.⁹

Mackennal’s daughter Henrietta recalled this period when her father was a ‘caretaker-guest’:

We arrived in London in early 1894, to stay at the house of the actress Mrs Brown Potter, in Abbey Road, St John’s Wood. It was a strange house, and not really suitable for my father’s work, so from here we had to look for a larger place.¹⁰

It seems likely that this relationship served as a conduit for Mackennal, enabling him to meet and obtain commissions from members of high society and artistic circles when he arrived back in England.

Kyrle Bellew, 1890. Photo by Falk [Walter Barnett], Sydney.

Falk Album, Theatre Heritage Australia

Eugénie Legrand, c.1882. Photo by Albert Naegeli, New York.

Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC

In 1891, still in Australia, Kyrle Bellew’s former wife, the French actress Eugénie Legrand, commissioned an untraced bust from Mackennal. Legrand had been married to Bellew, ‘the handsomest man in Melbourne’, in 1874 very briefly—she left him after twelve hours of honeymoon—but long enough apparently to conceive a son. The wedding between the beautiful couple had been celebrated with great ‘éclat’, according to Table Talk.Her acting career in Australia was substantially over by 1891. The sculptor wrote to Legrand on 3 August from the Hotel Metropole in Sydney:

I expect to begin the work in Melbourne next Monday … I told Madame Bernhardt that you had commissioned me to execute your bust in marble and she was very pleased. Madame has been most kind to me giving me her drawing room as a studio and posing three hours at a time. I should like with your permission to exhibit your bust in the salon at the same time as I do the busts of Madame Bernhardt and Mrs. Potter.¹¹

It is significant that in this letter Mackennal groups all three actresses together and quite clearly at this point intends to exhibit the three together at the Paris Salon.

Sarah Bernhardt in her studio with a self portrait bust, c.1878. Photo by Achille Mélandri, Paris.

National Portrait Gallery, London

Sarah Bernhardt, c.1892-93, by Bertram Mackennal

Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

The French actress Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923) was a bigger star than Anderson, Ward, Achurch or Brown Potter. Like those women, Mackennal not only created portraits of the actress but also socialised with Bernhardt and her company. The sculptor attempted at least three representations—a statuette in role as Cleopatra, a relief and a bust, but only the relief was ever exhibited, the statuette and bust being untraced.¹² It was the bust that was executed first, initially in Melbourne and finished up in Europe. It appears in a photograph of Mackennal’s studio in London c.1898. The surviving bronze relief, now in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1894.

The ‘Divine Sarah’ was the most celebrated actress of her generation, inspiring the leading writers of her generation to write many of her finest plays.  She was a global superstar who always performed in French. Her voice was ‘a golden bell’, her figure slim, her eyes dark. After her debut with the Comédie Francaise in 1862, she conquered London in 1879, New York in 1880, going on to open her own Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt in Paris in 1899. 

Sarah Bernhardt as Cleopatra, 1891. Photo by Falk [Walter Barnett], Sydney.

Falk Album, Theatre Heritage Australia

Bertram Mackennal’s London studio, with his statue of Circe in the foreground and bust of Bernhardt behind

From The Sketch (London), 29 April 1896

 

She and her company undertook a major tour of Australia in 1891, brought by J.C. Williamson and presenting many of her most famous productions—La Dame aux Camélias,La Tosca,Adriana Lecouvreur,Fedora,Cleopatraand Jeanne d’Arc amongst them. And she gave the world premiere of Pauline Blanchard in Sydney. On a world tour, between May and August, she and her company performed in Honolulu, Samoa, Auckland, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, before returning via the USA through Auckland. In Australia, she would play six different roles on consecutive nights, always to packed houses. 

When she first arrived in Sydney harbour, the photographer Walter Barnett and wife Ella boarded her ship prior to disembarkation, signing her up exclusively. Learned from his mother in Melbourne, Barnett spoke French. She sat for Barnett in Sydney and Melbourne and later in London—as she did for Bertram Mackennal. Without fluent French at this stage, it is unclear how Mackennal first met her. It may be that they were introduced by Eugénie Legrand.

However, having met, the first we hear of her relationship with him is that she wrote to the Argus objecting to the fact that Mackennal had only been awarded second place in a public competition organised by the National Gallery of Victoria for his sculpture, The Triumph of Truth.

Marie Tempest as Adele in An Artist’s Model, 1895. Photo by Window & Grove, London.

Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Melba in her garden near Maidenhead with playwright/partner Haddon Chambers (left) and Bertram Mackennal (right). Photo by H. Gude.

Private collection

Back to London

While Mackennal returned to Europe at the urging of Mrs Brown Potter and Sarah Bernhardt, it was not until 1896 that he again produced a portrait of a performing artist. The untraced bust of Marie Tempest (1866-1942) was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1896, and in a review of this exhibition in The Times the critic commented: ‘Mr Bertram Mackennal’s Miss Marie Tempest is a really excellent work.’¹³

Tempest was born Mary Etherington in London and educated in Belgium before studying music in Paris, then vocal at the Royal College of Music in London. Making her stage debut in 1885, she quickly established herself as a star in musical comedy. A friend of Melba, married three times, she toured Australia and New Zealand in 1917 and 1920 taking with her thirteen productions of comedies now long forgotten, it seems. She was created DBE in 1937.

Marie Tempest and her first husband, Alfred Izard, lived close to the Mackennals in St John’s Wood. Henrietta Mackennal wrote about her visits to their home in her memoirs:

Marie Tempest, I remember also visited us at Marlborough Hill. She was to be the leading comedienne of the English stage … She went horse riding most mornings, and often stopped to visit us, tying her horse up to a lamppost right outside our gate … She was not very beautiful, but a fascinating person, and I remember she had the most beautiful hands. Father did a bust of her, and before it was cast, she gave him a packet of letters from her present lover [Cosmo Gordon-Lennox], whom she later married, she begged him to seal them inside the cast where her heart would be. He carried this out, and one wonders whether they are still there today.

Tempest’s biographer Hector Bolitho names Mackennal as a regular guest at her house during this time.¹⁴ It is possible that it was Melba that introduced Mackennal to Tempest. In June 1900, Mackennal told an Australian friend that, for a long time prior to executing her bust, Nellie Melba had been an enormous support to him.

Referring to his success in London, Mackennal said: ‘I owe it all to Melba. She introduced me to all the big people and I held up their walls for years.’¹⁵ One of the ‘big people’ that Mackennal probably was referring to would have been Tempest. Mackennal’s commissioned bust stood in her house alongside copies she owned of his Salome and his Circe.¹⁶ 

In early 1896 Tempest was the leading lady in a musical comedy intriguingly entitled An Artist’s Model and it was while enjoying this success that Tempest commissioned Mackennal to sculpt her.

Another portrait commission that Mackennal probably gained through his connection with Melba is that of Mimi Ronald, née Ettlinger (from Frankfurt-am-Main), the first wife of composer-pianist-conductor Landon Ronald (1873-1938).¹⁷ They married in 1897 and it is likely that Mackennal’s portrait, again lost, dates from around this time. Mimi died in 1932. 

Nellie Melba had met Ronald in 1891, when he was a répétiteur at Covent Garden, becoming her accompanist for many years. We know very little about this portrait, recorded as a bust on Colin Kraay’s list.

Nellie Melba, 1899, by Bertram Mackennal

National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Nellie Melba, 1902. Photo by Walter Barnett.

National Portrait Gallery, London

At the end of the century, Mackennal came to perhaps his most important works in this series, two busts of Nellie Melba (1861-1931), completed in 1899. Had they known each other growing up in Melbourne? As already noted, Melba was the conduit for several of Mackennal’s commissions, including those of Marie Tempest, Mimi Landon Ronald and Ada Crossley. Agnes Murphy, Melba’s secretary and biographer observed:

It had become an established tradition with her to take a house on the River Thames, generally in the vicinity of Marlow, during the summer months…and to this cool retreat she always hurried at the close of her engagements in London, even after the opera... During these terms of river residence Melba did her utmost to make the place attractive for her colleagues in art, and there she loved to entertain them.¹⁸

Mackennal was one of these ‘colleagues in art.’ His daughter recalled:

It was there in Marlborough Hill that I first met Dame Nellie Melba, the great mezzo-soprano [sic] who often visited my parents. One year she took a large house at Henley for the summer, where she entertained. At that time she was always saying that she would like to be buried in the cemetery of the little church of Stoke Poges… In the church she sat and played the organ singing ‘Ave Maria’ in her superb voice… At a later date father completed a bust of her which was for many years on the stairs of the Covent Garden Opera House in London.¹⁹

Interior of Melba’s house at 30, Great Cumberland Place, London. The Mackennal bust may be seen on the left. Photo by W & D Downey, London. State Library Victoria, Melbourne.

Already recognised as the greatest opera singer of her era, in 1898 Melba had recently visited the composer Puccini at his home in Tuscany to study with him his most recent, so far unsuccessful opera, La bohème.²⁰ She performed Mimì in Philadelphia, then at Covent Garden in 1899, the year of Mackennal’s portrait of her, and later that year the diva performed the role at the Metropolitan in New York. Effectively it was Melba who made it the world’s favourite opera.

Melba’s portraits by Mackennal are formal and stately, perhaps reflecting the persona that Melba, now aged 40 and at the height of her career, wished to portray. She had decided that one of the two versions would be bequeathed to the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, her home town, the other to the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden where she reigned supreme. These portraits had a memorial role and it is significant of her esteem for Mackennal that she chose him to execute them. In a letter to the trustees of the National Gallery in Melbourne, printed in The Argus, she focuses on her patronage of the sculptor:

Last year I commissioned Mr Bertram Mackennal, the Australian born sculptor, whose work over here has created so much interest in the last few years, to execute a marble bust of myself with a view to its presentation to the Public Library [sic] of Melbourne. I have now to inform you that the work is finished…and I beg that you, on behalf of the trustees of the Public Library of Melbourne, will accept it from a daughter of the city, as tribute of her unfailing remembrance and affection. The bust, with its pedestal (which in itself is a work of art) will be forwarded to you within the next two or three weeks. May I, in conclusion, express the hope that I am not wholly forgotten in our beloved country.²¹

The version given to Covent Garden still stands at the head of the Grand Staircase—Melba on the left and (until recently) her predecessor the great Adelina Patti on the right. Sadly, in 1970, when an Australian film crew needed to see it, it was dropped, causing the head to be severed from the neck. It has since been repaired.

Of the version in Melbourne, Patricia Fullerton has written (in the Mackennal exhibition catalogue of 2007):

Elevated above eye-level on her pedestal, she looks every bit a prima donna, her imperious gaze surveying an audience before her. With hair swept up, head held high and turned slightly aside, the formality of the composition is softened, giving emphasis to her handsome shoulders emerging from the swirling drapery. A large art-nouveau brooch, in the form of a winged angel with lyre, clasps the knotted drape and draws attention to her throat and chest, alluding to her famed vocal cords and powerful lungs.

Ada Crossley on her marriage to Francis Muecke, 1905. Photo by Walter Barnett.

National Portrait Gallery, London

The portrait bust of another Australian singer, the leading concert contralto Ada Crossley(1871-1929), is also only known of through the list compiled by Colin Kraay. Unfortunately, as with others, it is currently untraced. Henrietta Mackennal says that on occasion Ada Crossley was mistaken for Queen Mary – a clue if the bust is ever to be identified.

Born in 1871 in Gippsland, Victoria, Crossley studied singing in Melbourne, initially traveling the 200 kilometres to her weekly lessons with Fanny Simonsen. Moving to London in 1894, she took further lessons with Sir Charles Santley, then in Paris with the great teacher, Madame Marchesi, who later told an Australian journalist: ‘Miss Crossley has a splendid contralto voice, there is no doubt as to her success. She is very intelligent, a hard worker and I consider her one of my best pupils.’²² 

Successful from her London debut at the Queen’s Hall in 1895, Crossley was much admired by Melba. For religious reasons, she never appeared in opera. It is probable that she also knew Mackennal through the diva. Mackennal’s daughter Henrietta writes of her own close relationship with the singer:

I became very friendly with Ada Crossley, the famous Australian contralto. She married a nose and throat specialist, Francis Muecke, he was best man at my wedding, and they lived near us in London.... Ada Crossley was a retiring type of person, not fond of public life or parties, in fact she even disliked going out alone, therefore she often asked me to go with her, sometimes to dine at the Carlton or the Savoy, then on to a first night or a concert.²³

It seems likely that the Mackennal bust was executed around the time of Crossley’s marriage in London in 1905. Her wedding was attended by over 500, including many London-based Australians. Walter Barnett, another Australian in London, took the formal wedding photography of her.

Salome, 1895, by Bertram Mackennal

 Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Bertram Mackennal holding his sculpture Salome, c.1895. Photographer unknown.

Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Mackennal’s Other Theatrical Sculpture

If made in 1905, the Mackennal bust of Crossley is the last of his sculptures of living performers. However, he also made clear his commitment to the performing arts in other ways.

In 1897, Mackennal created one of his best-known works, Salome. This subject had inspired artists throughout the nineteenth century but producing it at the moment he did cannot have been an accident. Oscar Wilde was in prison, in disgrace after being found guilty of ‘indecency and sodomy’, his one-act play Salome, written in French for Sarah Bernhardt, remaining unperformed (indeed banned) in Britain and mocked by the press.

The fact that this was a courageous, perhaps even foolhardy, moment in time for Mackennal to present this piece at the Royal Academy has been overlooked. It calls to mind another moment when censorship had struck, the exhibition of his Circe at the RA in 1891, its riotous base beskirted in case visitors to the show should be corrupted. Wilde’s play was first performed in Paris the year before Mackennal’s work but had to wait until 1905 to be given in England (and until 1933 in Australia).

Mackennal depicts the moment when Salome, naked having performed the ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’ for Herod, thirsting to kiss the mouth of John the Baptist, sword clasped demurely behind her back, now demands her gift from the king: ‘In a silver charger.... the head of Iokanaan [John the Baptist].’²⁴

It is significant that he chose to be photographed later in life with Salome. In this carefully constructed photograph, Mackennal is depicted in an artist’s smock, thoughtfully gazing at one of his most successful theatrical works. A more apt choice for a sculptor who continuously celebrated the world of the performing arts would be hard to imagine.

Circe, 1893, by Bertram Mackennal

National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

The Dancer, 1904, by Bertram Mackennal

Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

There is no evidence that Mackennal was a particular follower of dance, but in 1904 he created his only work in the field, one of his masterpieces, The Dancer.²⁵ By the end of the nineteenth century, ballet had reached a low point, with little in the way of innovation. At the start of the new century, a new star burst on to the scene, the American Isadora Duncan, and it was she that revitalised the genre, working mainly in Paris and London, dancing barefoot and endeavoring to recapture the glories of dance in Ancient Greece.

Mackennal’s Dancer is based on Duncan’s style. The pose is known as ‘épaulement’. While the legs and hips turn to the left, the shoulders and head arch fleetingly in the opposite direction. Rodin’s La Méditation, developed through several versions by the great sculptor between 1881 and 1896, addresses the same artistic goals, albeit more radically, and Mackennal may well have seen one of these in Paris or London.

In 1906, Mackennal was commissioned to create a memorial to Robert Brough (1855-1906), a London-born actor who lived and worked in Australia for the last twenty years of his life. Born into a famous theatrical family, Brough worked initially for D’Oyly Carte’s company, legendary first performers of Gilbert and Sullivan. In 1885, Robert and his actress wife, Florence Trevelyan, travelled to Australia, imported by Williamson, Garner and Musgrove, where they toured comedies.

Over the years they premièred in Australia many of the important playwrights of the day—Pinero, J.M. Barrie and Oscar Wilde amongst them. Brough died of a heart attack mid-season in 1906, the greatest actor-manager Australia had known, according to Beaumont Smith.

Tragedy Enveloping Comedy, c.1906-09, by Bertram Mackennal

National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne—on long-term loan to the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, Victoria

Robert Brough, c.1894. Photo by Falk [Walter Barnett], Sydney.

Falk Album, Theatre Heritage Australia

Mackennal was to use the Brough memorial’s theme, Tragedy Enveloping Comedy, again in 1911 for another man-of-the-theatre, W.S. Gilbert (1836-1911). He had also used this iconography in Bernhardt’s portrait exhibited in 1894. Gilbert was the writing half of the famous operetta team, Gilbert and Sullivan. His portrait of W.S. Gilbert was not modelled from life. Lady Gilbert commissioned this work as a memorial to her husband and the portrait was placed in All Saint’s, Gilbert’s parish church, near his home at Harrow Weald. It is unknown how Lady Gilbert knew of Mackennal, though both Mary Anderson and Marie Tempest knew Gilbert well and either may have suggested him.

Together Gilbert and Sullivan wrote the Savoy Operas, produced at D’Oyly Carte’s Savoy Theatre in London, their collaboration lasting twenty years. Successful throughout the English-speaking world, Gilbert’s great gift was in writing ingenious, pithy, satirical lyrics that set well to music. Gilbert also wrote straight plays, mostly comedies, before working with Sullivan—including Pygmalion and Galatea (1871), the story of a sculptor who wishes his statue into life as a beautiful young woman, one of Mary Anderson’s most successful roles, and Comedy and Tragedy (1884) written especially for Anderson.²⁶

W.S. Gilbert Memorial, c.1912, by Bertram Mackennal, All Saint’s Church, Harrow Weald. Gilbert & Sullivan Society of Facebook.

Mackennal’s portrait of Gilbert consists of a large portrait in relief in the centre flanked by figures of Comedy and Tragedy. As will have been noted, a recurring theme in Mackennal’s body of sculpture is the iconography of Comedy and Tragedy—the motif appearing both as masks and in figurative form. While this theme was quite common at this time, the repetition throughout his oeuvre might be seen as a motif for Mackennal himself.

The final work of art with a performing arts theme that Mackennal produced was his Shakespeare Memorial, commissioned by Sydney newspaperman Henry Gullett in 1914 (for the bard’s tercentenary) to stand outside the Art Gallery of New South Wales. A major work from the latter part of Mackennal’s career, he perhaps intended it to be a summation of his devotion to theatre and literature. As we have seen, Mackennal had sculpted Shakespearian actors from the earliest days—Mary Anderson, Genevieve Ward, Janet Achurch and Sarah Bernhardt. Surmounted by a full-length figure of Shakespeare, an amalgam of various known portraits of the bard, Mackennal depicted five life-size characters around the base—Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Portia and Falstaff.

Plaster cast of the figure of Shakespeare for the Shakespeare Memorial, 1925, by Bertram Mackennal. Photographer unknown.

Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Bertram Mackennal modelling a figure for his Shakespeare Memorial, c.1925. Photographer unknown.

Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Shakespeare Memorial

City of Sydney Archives, Sydney

Shakespeare Memorial (detail) showing Falstaff

City of Sydney Archives, Sydney

Unfortunately, this important public memorial, ‘one of his finest works’ according to William Moore, now rests on the central reservation of the busy highway running from Macquarie Street to the Eastern and Southern suburbs of Sydney.²⁷ A less appropriate place—its back to the majority of the stream of oncoming traffic—for the finale of a great Australian sculptor who embraced the depiction of the theatrical arts would be hard to imagine.

Note

An earlier version of this essay, severely edited, appeared in the catalogue for the major exhibition of Bertram Mackennal’s work at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2007

Acknowledgements

With thanks to Patricia Fullerton, Elisabeth Kumm, Tony Locantro, Meri Machin-Roberts (2007), Michael Magnusson, Sophie Wilson

Endnotes

1. In National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, and terracotta in private collection, Geelong

2. H. Mackennal, The Story of a Royal Sculptor, unpublished and undated, compiled by P. Kraay (1990)

3. Argus (Melbourne), 13 October 1931

4. A. Galbally, Charles Conder: The Last Bohemian, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 2002

5. Arthur Streeton to Tom Roberts, early October 1890, in A. Galbally & A. Gray (eds), Letters from Smike: The Letters of Arthur Streeton 1890-1943, Oxford University Press, Australia, 1989

6. K. Brisbane (ed), Entertaining Australia: The Performing Arts as Cultural History, Currency Press, Sydney, 1991

7. Mackennal’s portraits of Janet Achurch:

i. Bertram Mackennal, Janet Achurch, c.1890, plaster, cast shellac, water-based emulsion paint casting, 57.8 x 47.6 x 8.5cm. National Gallery of Victoria

ii. Bertram Mackennal, Janet Achurch, c.1890, plaster, National Gallery of Australia (I understand that the NGA version was a copy created by Joseph Brown in the 1970s)

iii. Bertram Mackennal, Janet Achurch, 1890 bronze cast, 58.3 x 48.2 x 9.0 cm, Monash University Collection

8. N. Stewart, My Life’s Story, John Sands, Sydney, 1925

9. Table Talk, 18 October 1890 and 3 January 1901

10. H. Mackennal, p.

11. Bertram Mackennal to Eugénie Legrand, 3 August 1891, Lucy Bellew Papers, National Library of Australia

12. Société des Artistes Français, Salon de 1894, Cat. 3335

13. The Times (London), 25 May 1896

14. H. Bolitho, Marie Tempest, Cobden-Sanderson, London, 1936

15. Herald (Melbourne), 13 October 1931

16. Bolitho, p.96

17. E. Cundell, Sir Landon Ronald, in The Dictionary of National Biography 1931-1940, Oxford University Press, London, 1949

18. A. Murphy, Melba: A Biography, Chatto & Windus, London, 1909

19. H. Mackennal, p.13

20. B. & F. Mackenzie, Singers of Australia: From Melba to Sutherland, Lansdowne Press, Melbourne, 1967

21. Argus (Melbourne), 24 October 1899

22. Age (Melbourne), 22 December 1894, quoted in B. & F. Mackenzie

23. H. Mackennal, p.26

24. Aubrey Beardsley and Oscar Wilde, Salome, translated from the French by Lord Alfred Douglas, originally published 1894, republished by Dover, New York, 1967

25. Bertram Mackennal, The Dancer, 1904, bronze, 168 x 71 x 69 cm, Art Gallery of New South Wales

26. S. Dark and R. Grey, W.S. Gilbert: His Life and Letters, Methuen, London, 1923

27. W. Moore, The Story of Australian Art, vol. II, Angus & Robertson, 1934

Selected Bibliography

Mary Anderson, A Few Memories, Harper and Brothers, New York, 1895

Ann Blainey, I am Melba: A Biography, Black Inc, Melbourne, 2008

Hector Bolitho, Marie Tempest, Cobden-Sanderson, London, 1936

Katherine Brisbane (ed), Entertaining Australia: The Performing Arts as Cultural History, Currency Press, Sydney, 1991

Deborah Edwards (ed), Bertram Mackennal (catalogue), Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2007

Corille Fraser, Come to Dazzle: Sarah Bernhardt’s Australian Tour, Currency Press/National Library of Australia, Sydney, 1998

Noëlle Guibert (ed), Portrait(s) de Sarah Bernhardt (catalogue), Bibliothêque nationale de France, Paris, 2000

John Hetherington, Melba: A Biography, Faber, Melbourne, 1967

Eric Irvin, Dictionary of the Australian Theatre 1788–1914, Hale and Iremonger, Sydney, 1985

Henrietta Mackennal, The Story of a Royal Sculptor, unpublished and undated memoir, compiled P. Kraay, 1990

Nellie Melba, Melodies and Memories, Thornton Butterworth, London, 1925

William R. Moran (ed), Nellie Melba: A Contemporary Review, Greenwood Press, Westport CT, 1985

Agnes G. Murphy, Melba: A Biography, Doubleday Page, New York, 1909

Roger Neill, Legends: The Art of Walter Barnett, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, 2000

Carol Ockman & Kenneth E. Silver, Sarah Bernhardt: The Art of High Drama (catalogue), The Jewish Museum, New York, 2005

Hal Porter, Stars of Australian Stage and Screen, Rigby, Adelaide, 1965

Joanna Richardson, Sarah Bernhardt and her World, Putnam, New York, 1977

Viola Tait, A Family of Brothers, Heinemann, Melbourne, 1971

Pamela Vestey, Melba: A Family Memoir, Phoebe Publishing, Melbourne, 1996

Genevieve Ward & Richard Whiteing, Both Sides of the Curtain, Cassell, London, 1918

Another celebrity was Mr J.C. Williamson, who came to us accompanied by his wife, Miss Maggie Moore, from America, in 1874. They opened at the Theatre Royal on 1st August. Maggie Moore had a good singing voice; she went on the stage when only eight years of age. Their opening piece was “Struck Oil”, which ran for 57 nights. It was so successful that it was taken to Ballarat, Bendigo and Castlemaine. The company went on to Sydney and played the same piece for 20 weeks. “Struck Oil” was, I believe, the best money-making piece ever produced in Australia. After 12 months’ continued success in Australia, Mr and Mrs Williamson went to India, America and Great Britain, meeting with continued success everywhere. They returned to Australia in 1879. Mr Williamson relinquished acting and developed all his energies and experiences to theatrical management. His name is still borne by a theatrical management now carrying on business here.

JC Williamson. Photo by Bradley & Rulofson, San Francisco.

State Library of NSW, Sydney

Maggie Moore. Photo by Tuttle & Co., Sydney.

State Library of NSW, Sydney

We have had Maggie Moore with us until quite recently, when she announced her intention of departing for her native state, San Francisco. A special matinee was held in her honour on 13th of October 1925. Her memory will ever remain fresh in the minds of those who have been privileged to see her on the stage.¹

Frederick Marshall must not be forgotten. He came here under Garner’s management. He was a highly finished actor, carefully studying the characters he had to portray, his principal ones being Markham in “Friends”, Perkins Middlewick in “Our Boys”, and Quilp in “The Old Curiosity Shop.”

Another of our visitors was Mr William Creswick who gained distinction as a tragedian in the Old World. It was late in life when he came to Australia, and his brilliancy had rather faded. His greatest character was that of Sir Giles Overreach.

Dion Boucicault Sr. Photo by Bradley & Rulofson, San Francisco.

State Library of NSW, Sydney

G.W. Anson as Eccles in Caste. Photo by Falk, Sydney.

Falk Album, Theatre Heritage Australia

Dion Boucicault visited us in 1885. He was distinguished not only as an actor but also as an author. His comedy of “London Assurance” made him famous. His first appearance in Melbourne was as Conn O’Kelly in “The Shaughraun”, his own Irish drama. When he left these shores, he left behind him a son and daughter, Mr “Dot” and Miss Nina Boucicault, who inherited the talent of their father and proved admirable additions to the comedy company of Mr and Mrs Robert Brough.

Anson was on our boards for some time. The principal character in which I remember him was that of Eccles in “Caste”, which was a truly clever performance.

Mr John Dunn, the original “Jim Crowe”, came here accompanied by his two accomplished daughters and played with ultimate success. The eldest, Rose, was married to a well-to-do grain broker, Mr L.L. Lewis, who was also a skilled musician. He was organist in St John’s Church, Toorak, where I was a member of his choir. The younger daughter, Marion, was married to Marcus Clarke, the author of the well-known, “For the Term of His Natural Life”, and other well-known works. I was acquainted with Mr Clarke before his literary fame. He was then a clerk in the Bank of Australasia. On the death of her husband, Mrs Clarke was appointed Registrar of Births and Deaths for Melbourne, in recognition of her husband’s talents.

Julia Mathews, 1875. Photo by Lock & Whitfield, London.

National Portrait Gallery, London

Rose Edouin

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

One of the most clever and versatile actresses with whom we have been favoured was Miss Julia Mathews, who came to us from New South Wales, where, I believe, she was born. Her range of characters was unlimited. She was a most deservedly popular favourite. She left us in search of success in London, where she was engaged for the part of “The Grand Duchess Gerolstein”, in which she achieved success. Poor girl, she did not live long to wear her laurels. An unfortunate contretemps occurred to an intimate friend of mine, who had access to the stage of the Princess Theatre, and went there to see his friend, Willie Edouin. He and Miss Matthews were playing in the same piece, both dressed as sailor boys. My friend saw a figure stooping to look through a peephole in the drop scene, which is kept for the purpose of viewing the state of the house. My friend, stepping lightly forward, gave the figure a vigorous slap behind, when to his horror and consternation, Miss Matthews turned round and called out, “Here, look out; mind what you are doing”.

The Edouin family, consisting of a son and three sisters, were included in our public favourites. Willie afterwards became manager of a public theatre. His eldest sister, Rose, was married to Mr G.B.W. Lewis, for many years a leading circus proprietor. After the death of her husband, she was, to the best of my remembrance, manageress of the Haymarket Theatre.

Miss Fanny Cathcart, afterwards Mrs Robert Heir, was a brilliant exponent of Shakespeare and other well-known authors and was leading lady. She fell in love with Mr Robert Heir and married him. They continued to play in Melbourne for many years. He, poor fellow, came to a sudden end. He was on the way to New Zealand, when one day, sitting on a deckchair, he fell forward and expired, a victim of heart failure.

Louise Cleveland

Australian Performing Arts Museum, Arts Centre Melbourne

Madame Céleste

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Miss Cleveland must not be omitted from my list. She arrived here in 1864 with her husband, Mr Viner (Vincent on the stage). In the character of Constance in “King John”, she displayed wonderful versatility, grief, indignation, and utter despair, which were depicted with tragic force. She even essayed to play the part of “Hamlet”, in which she fairly succeeded.

We were favoured with a visit from Madame Céleste in 1867, which is to be well remembered as Nature had dealt kindly with her. The play in which I best remember her was “Green Bushes”.

Adelaide Ristori. Photo by J.T. Gorus, Sydney.

State Library of NSW, Sydney

Sarah Bernhardt as Cleopatra. Photo by Falk, Sydney.

Falk Album, Theatre Heritage Australia

Another distinguished visitor we had was Madame Ristori, in 1875—to give her full title, the Marchioness Capranica del Grillo. She appeared in Melbourne and the provinces for three months. Some of her leading characters were “Mary Stuart”, “Myrrha”, and Lady Macbeth”.

Although Sarah Bernhardt was here for a very short time, she left behind a lasting impression of her talents. Among her best characters were those of “Camille”, “Fedora”, “Cleopatra” and “Jeanne d’Arc”.

Jennie Lee as Jo. Photo by E.C. Waddington & Co., Melbourne.

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Nellie Stewart as Zaza. Photo by Talma & Co.

Talma Postcard collection, Theatre Heritage Australia

Jennie Lee must not be forgotten. From her first appearance in Melbourne, she jumped to the front as a great actress. She was most natural. He delineation of the Street Arab in “Bleak House” was excellent. It appealed to the heart, with pity for the sufferings of the poor waif.

One of my great favourites was Miss Nellie Stewart, who possessed great powers as an actress, as well as vocal powers in comic opera. In the character of Zaza, the actress disappeared, and the spectators saw a woman of many moods and deep emotions. Another character in which I admired her was “Sweet Nell of Old Drury”.

I have left to the last my old friend and one in whom I hold in the greatest esteem, George Coppin. He and his wife arrived in Melbourne in July 1845,² bringing a theatrical company, including G.H. Rogers, the famous comedian. As a comedian, Mr Coppin was a master. He took the management of the Queen’s Theatre and produced the first pantomime in Melbourne. He may well be termed the Father of the Victorian Stage. In later years, when it was my privilege to see Mr Coppin on the stage, he took the character of Paul Pry, and the manner in which he sneaked on the stage to interrupt some business in which he was not wanted, with the expression “I hope I don’t intrude”, was a very fine piece of acting. Other characters in which he excelled were Aminabad Sleek in “The Serous Family”, Mawworn in “The Hypocrite”, also Bob Acres and Milky White. We are indebted to Mr Coppin for his enterprise in introducing to Australia very many actors and actresses of great ability, including the late G.V. Brooke. Mrs Charles Young should also be mentioned as having been brought out by Mr Coppin. She afterwards became famous as Mrs Herman Vezin.

George Coppin as Paul Pry

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

G.H. Rogers. Photo by J.T. Gorus, Sydney.

State Library of NSW, Sydney

The Theatre Royal was erected by Mr John Black and Mr Bayne, a solicitor, and it was destroyed by fire in 1872. The present structure is on the same site.

The Olympic Theatre, in Lonsdale-street, was commonly known as “The Iron Pot”. It was one of Mr Coppin’s ventures, put up in 1855 and took only about 30 days to erect. It became the home of many able and talented companies including a company of black-faced comedians, well and deservedly known as “The San Francisco Minstrels”.

Another great enterprise was Cremorne Gardens, Richmond, on the bank of the river, which was opened in 1856. It became a very popular resort for out-of-door entertainments. The gardens were well laid out and included a number of statues. It had refreshment rooms, a wild beast show, optical illusions, and a clever tightrope dancer. Its greatest attraction was a scenic representation of the Siege of Sebastopol, consisting of a painted canvas which spread along the lake at the bottom of the gardens, and from which there was a nightly display of fireworks.

Later on, in 1858, a theatre was added to the attractions of Cremorne. Part of the pleasure of a visit to these gardens was a trip up the river in Waterman’s boats in the cool of the evening. Subsequently a railway was constructed by the Melbourne Railway Company as far as Cremorne, which now forms part of the Brighton railway line. Ultimately the gardens and their contents were disposed of and, alas! to what sad uses may we become at last, it became a private lunatic asylum. For one act alone Coppin’s name deserves to be immortalised; it is that of the establishment of the Old Colonists’ Home. He initiated it as a Home for Old and Disabled Actors and Actresses. I was in the audience of the Theatre Royal when he propounded his plan. It is still a home for disabled actors, but since the original establishment, others than frequenters of the stage are given homes there. In addition to Mr Coppin’s residence in Lennox-street, Richmond, he had a seaside home at Sorrento, in which he passed a good deal of his time. He once wrote to the Government, suggesting the planting of trees on the ocean side of Sorrento, and as I then had charge of State Forests, the matter was handed over to me. Before coming to a decision, I deemed it advisable to visit the place. Mr Coppin, hearing of my arrival sent an invitation to the hotel to spend the evening with him, which I accepted. It was a most delightful interlude. He had staying with him Miss Georgia Hodgson, principal contralto in Lyster’s Opera Troupe, who filled up the evening by singing and playing, to my great delight. After that I often met Mr Coppin in the city, when he would never let me pass without a few words of pleasant converse. When he passed to that “bourne from whence no traveller returns”, I felt I had lost a dear friend.

I have personally had some little experience on the stage. In 1863 I joined the “Garrick Club”, and included in its membership were a number of leading business and professional men. I remained a member of the club for some years, and appeared, I think, on the stage of all the Melbourne theatres, taking part in Shakespearian plays and English comedies.

In conclusion, may I ask my readers to think kindly of the poor players who “strut and fret their hour upon the stage”, and then are heard no more.

David Martin. Photo by Talma & Co., Melbourne.

Courtesy of Margaret Knight

Endnotes

1. Maggie Moore died last month, Jan 1926,  at San Francisco, supervening on an operation in which she lost a leg—Editor of The Justice of the Peace Magazine

2. Possibly January 1845—Margaret Knight, 2025

First published The Justice of the Peace Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 119, 7 February 1926, pp.2-3

Thank you to Margaret Knight, great grand daughter of David Martin, for providing a transcript of this article and also for supplying photographs of her great grandfather.

For more information on the career of David Martin, refer https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/martin-david-7502

Live performance of various styles has been enjoyed by Box Hill residents across three centuries. Located 14 kilometres (8.7 miles) east of Melbourne’s Central Business District, the area commenced development in the 1850s. In 1861 a post-office was opened, and ‘Box Hill’, one of several suggested names offered by various residents, is reported as being named after Box Hill in Surrey, England.

According to Andrew Lemon, most social life at the time evolved around the churches. It is therefore not surprising that one of the earliest concerts and dramatic entertainment on record in Box Hill was in August 1866, presented in the Church of England schoolroom in aid of the Benevolent Asylum. In 1867, the Catholic school room was the venue for popular readings ‘by professional ladies and gentlemen from Melbourne and Richmond, assisted by local talent’.

A turning point for Box Hill’s growth and cultural activities arrived in 1882 when the railway line extended from Camberwell to Lilydale. The new station at Box Hill facilitated accessibility to the area for visitors and stimulated the growth of new communities.

Lemon also points out that in the mid-1880s, Box Hill became a favoured location for landscape artists of the Heidelberg School, including Arthur Streeton, Tom Roberts, and Frederick McCubbin. While not theatre-related, this indicates Box Hill’s development as a cultural centre during the late 19th century.

Amateur theatre was already flourishing across Victoria in regional and metropolitan areas, and Box Hill residents could present their own theatrical performances in local performance spaces. Performance venues in Box Hill included a forty-feet-long hall built in Elgar Road in 1885 with a stage and dance floor, named after the hero of the day, General Gordon. Also in 1885, a consortium of businessmen built a Recreation Hall at 934–938 Whitehorse Road. It opened in November with a Grand Concertof vocal, instrumental and comic items.

Mechanics’ Institutes in towns and suburbs across Australia were also venues for live performances. However, first attempts failed by the Box Hill Temperance lobby to establish an independent Mechanics’ Institute and free library in 1884 and 1890. Two years later, efforts were more successful, but instead of operating from an independent building, the Box Hill Mechanics’ Institute was relegated to using four rooms inside the Temperance Hall, built in 1889. The Mechanics’ Institute operated for three years, ceasing to exist in 1895. Located in Whitehorse Road near the site of the Box Hill Town Hall, the Temperance Hall was patriotically renamed ‘Federal Hall’ in 1900.

Federal Hall (formerly the Temperance Hall), to the right of the Box Hill Town Hall. Courtesy of The Box Hill Historical Society.

The Box Hill Dramatic Club formed in 1888 and presented a three-act play titled The Flying Scudby Dion Boucicault at the end of the first year. Shire Secretary John Kefford courageously played the role of Lord Woodlie but was shown no mercy by the Standardnewspaper reviewer, who described his performance as ‘entirely devoid of expression and lacked that amount of energy generally due to a lover’.

In 1891, French actress Sarah Bernhardt was captivating audiences in Melbourne’s Princess Theatre with her performances. One free afternoon between shows, Bernhardt and her party took a trip to the country and stopped at Box Hill’s Railway Hotel.

French actress Sarah Bernhardt, 1891

Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne

Regarded at the time as ‘the most famous actress in the world’, Bernhardt reportedly made herself perfectly at home walking around the hotel, opened the piano lid, and to everyone’s astonishment played a couple of French airs. Bernhardt then departed with the rest of her friends in ‘a handsome drag’. An exciting event indeed—international theatre had arrived in Box Hill!

The Box Hill Temperance Band (United Methodist Brass Band), 1890.
Courtesy of The Box Hill Historical Society.

The Box Hill Temperance Band formed during the 1880s, providing musical entertainment for the community. The band also performed on 24 May 1889 for Queen Victoria’s birthday celebrations.

In August 1923, Box Hill electrician and amateur radio enthusiast Herbert S. Beattie broadcast a performance by the local Brass Band, using equipment in his home. The event received extensive newspaper coverage, as it was an Australian first for a Brass Band to broadcast a full concert.

The Box Hill Brass Band in 1923, broadcasting the first concert ‘over the air’ in Australia

Box Hill Historical Society

In 1927, the group became the Box Hill City Band, which later ceased operation when male musicians enlisted for World War II. Restarted in 1949 by Thomas Davison, today the Box Hill City Band is one of the oldest community brass bands in Victoria.

The Box Hill Salvation Army Corps formed in 1891, entertaining with their marching band and brass bands. The aim was to attract crowds, spread the Gospel and raise funds to further their work.

Grand Concerts continued to be popular towards the end of the 19th century, such as the event presented on 1 August 1899 in the Recreation Hall.

Program for a Grand Concert, 1 August 1899, in aid of the Young Men’s Club of Box Hill. Published by E.F. Hodges, Printer, Box Hill, Victoria.
Theatre programme collection, State Library Victoria. Record ID: 9929722593607636.

Choral performances also offered enjoyable live entertainment, and the Box Hill Temperance Choir commenced in the late 19th century, changing their name to the Box Hill Choral Society in the early 1900s. Post-war in 1946, the group restarted as the Box Hill Choral Society, and in 1984 became the Box Hill Chorale, a Chapter of the Royal Victorian Choir. Today, the Box Hill Chorale is regarded as one of Victoria’s most active choirs.

Andrew Lemon observes that around 1911, although many varied clubs and societies were being set up in Box Hill, moral questions provoked the most debate. The Temperance movement and Social Reform Bureau were attacking the triple evils of ‘drink, gambling and impurity’ and both attracted strong support in Box Hill. As Lemon points out, although this era was a time of peace and progress, it was also ‘a turbulent age trying to come to terms with a rapidly changing world’.

As an extension of the Choral Society, a meeting of interested persons was called on 11 July 1919 in Gibson’s Hall to form an Operatic Club in Box Hill. The conductor would be esteemed Australian composer, conductor and music teacher, Arthur Maybee Chanter. The aim of the group was to produce suitable operatic and choral works of the great masters. The Operatic Club doesn’t appear to have eventuated then, but in 1929 when the Ava Choral Society presented a concert in aid of charity, they continued presenting concerts and then musicals with various name changes until 1933. Names included the Ava Choral Party and Ava Musical Club. Venues included the Rialto Theatre (formerly the Recreation Hall) and Lyric Theatre. The producer and musical director was Mrs A.V. Austin who performed with her husband Alfred Vallance Austin in the concerts. Mrs Austin retired in 1933, and the group became the Box Hill Operatic Society, but would close during the war.

Professional actor, singer, dancer, producer, teacher and war hero Iris Roderick nee Mockridge was instrumental in Box Hill’s performance scene, particularly during the 1930s (see Iris Roderick: A Child Prodigy by Helen Harris). Iris Roderick designed an award-winning float for her dance students to represent Box Hill in the Centenary of Victoria celebrations in 1934.

The award-winning Centenary of Victoria celebratory float, 1934. Courtesy of The Box Hill Historical Society.

The Box Hill Operatic Society was revived in 1946 by Murray Rawlings, pre-war secretary of the group. Their first production was High Jinks in November 1946, then Maid of the Mountains in October 1947 and The Lilac Domino presented in association with the Citizens’ Committee for Community Activities in October,1948 at the Box Hill Town Hall.

A scene from The Lilac Domino presented by the Box Hill Operatic Society at the Box Hill Town Hall on 21 and 22 October 1948 (left) and cover of program (right).
Courtesy of The Box Hill Historical Society.

The Box Hill Operatic Society continued to present shows until closing in 1958. The closure was mostly attributed to the unavailability of actors due to the attraction of television. Box Hill Picture Theatres also felt the effect of TV on audiences, limiting screenings to the end of the week.

The importance of music and arts in the community, particularly immediately post-war, was admirably recognised by the Box Hill City Council. In 1945, a council sub-committee was established, and a Citizens’ Committee was inaugurated. When the Box Hill Library opened in October 1950, the first Librarian, C. Phillip Billot, also had the title of ‘Coordinator of Community Activities’, and introduced a cultural scheme. First, he encouraged residents to regard the library as a community centre, and play-readings, recitals of gramophone records and a record-lending section were some of the early features.

Mr Billot was also asked to draw up a list of borrowers asking for books on certain topics, and he would call a meeting of those on the list with a view to forming a club. The Council would provide a meeting-room free of charge and assist with an annual financial grant. Once each club was established, the Council gradually withdrew, and this impressive initiative resulted in the formation of many organisations in Box Hill, including clubs for film, drama, art, stamps and ballet.

The new Box Hill City Drama Group commenced in April 1951, performing in the Town Hall for the first seven years. Scenery was initially stored in members’ garages, but the Box Hill City Council offered generous assistance, including providing a permanent place to make and store scenery.

In a nearby area, a long-running theatre group formed in 1953 called the Mitcham Repertory Group, founded by Ossie Maxwell Joffre Grant with Daphne Powell and Phil Mudge. When Max retired from the Mitcham Repertory Group in 1993, he had directed 53 of the 130 plays performed by the company over that 40-year period.

Until television arrived in 1956, musical comedies, ballets and other shows usually attracted good houses at the Box Hill Town Hall. However, the venue’s poor acoustics and increasing costs saw the drama company move to the newly completed St Peters Hall. This venue became the company’s home until moving to the Lutheran Hall in 1970. The City of Box Hill Drama Group presented quality productions, winning prizes in various Festivals.

A spectacular event was presented in Box Hill on the 6 March 1954 when Philip Billot, the Box Hill City Librarian and Co-ordinator of Community Activities, wrote a pageant titled The Cavalcade of the Southern Cross.Depicting Australia’s history in 18 episodes, the pageant took place on the Box Hill City Oval, with a cast of about 500 locals. The event honoured the visit of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh’s visit to Victoria in March 1954.

Program cover for The Cavalcade of the Southern Cross, 6 March 1954 (signed by Chipps Rafferty MBE)

Courtesy of The Box Hill Historical Society

The pageant was directed by William P. Carr, Drama Director of the National Theatre, who requested that a three feet high stage with an area of 50 x 50ft. be erected in the centre of the oval, with ramps on three sides. Costumes could be borrowed from the National Theatre. The cast would be choreographed by Margaret Earl and comprise local community groups, with Australian actor Chips Rafferty MBE announced as the lead performer. Radio personality Terry Dear would be the commentator, and a Cobb and Co coach was hired from the Ballarat Council.

Box Hill community groups participating in The Cavalcade of the Southern Cross included the Ballet Group, Choral Society, City Band, Drama Group, Discussion Group, Operatic Society; the Baptist Pioneers, CWA, Box Hill Branch RSL, Brownies, the Grammar School, High School, Methodist Young Men’s Club, Box Hill South Square Dance Club, folk dancers and Greek and Swedish groups. Members of Box Hill City Council participated as did the Royal Caledonian Society of Melbourne Pipe Band and of course, the lead performer Chips Rafferty with the Box Hill Operatic Society and school groups.

The 8.00 pm starting time of the pageant was delayed for 20 minutes to allow the hundreds of people crowding the entrance to settle in their places. Over 7,000 people paid 2/- each for the badge and another 2/- for the souvenir program, with proceeds going to the Box Hill Hospital. Entertaining the crowd while waiting for showtime was highland dancing to the music of a pipe band, and folk dancing by a Greek group, with Councillor Lundgren providing the music on his piano accordion. 

Detail from the program for The Cavalcade of the Southern Cross, 6 March 1954. Courtesy of The Box Hill Historical Society.

To showcase another British contribution to Australian life, little girls from the Box Hill Brownie packs were dressed as rabbits in brown sacking with pointed ears and pompom tails. At an appropriate time, the Brownie ‘rabbits’ ran all over the sports ground.

Another highlight in the programme was Chips Rafferty reciting ‘The Man from Snowy River’ and singing with the Box Hill Operatic Society.

The Drama Group contributed two items: Holdup of the Carcoar Mail by Ben Hall and Ned Kellyand The Last of the Bushrangers.

Lola Jackson, ‘The Spirit of Freedom’ in The Cavalcade of the Southern Cross, 6 March 1954. Courtesy of Lola Brown nee Jackson.

Lola Jackson was the winner of a competition to select a local young woman to play the part of ‘The Spirit of Freedom’ in the pageant. After interval came a loud fanfare of trumpets, followed by drums and bagpipes. As the music faded, commentator Terry Dear’s voice spoke of Federation, then Lola spectacularly appeared on her horse in the Federation Tableau, accompanied by mass singing of ‘Song of Australia’.

Lola Brown nee Jackson recalls that the horse's owner was nervous that the horse would be spooked if the spotlights came on as planned, so they could only use reduced lighting for the grand scene.

For the final episode titled ‘The Crown’, the full cast assembled, with Lola and her horse in the centre, with mass singing of ‘The Recessional’ and a huge glittering crown suspended in space above the tableau. As the singing ended, lights dimmed and five stars representing the Southern Cross twinkled as the band and choir broke into the National Anthem. A spectacular and memorable event in Box Hill’s history. 

Program cover for The Red Sombrero staged by Cid Ellwood Operatic Productions at the Box Hill Town Hall in 1956

Internet Archive

Performer, composer, director and playwright Cid Ellwood formed his own operatic company in 1949, which performed in various suburbs, including the Box Hill Town Hall. Cid juggled work in his family’s Essendon business to operate Cid Ellwood Operatic Productions, specialising in light opera and musicals, some written by Cid himself.

Principals in the cast of The Red Sombrero presented at the Box Hill Town Hall in 1956 included Nance Grant (Rosita), Shirley Weston (Maria). Cid Ellwood (Pedro), Elaine McKenna (Lola), Fred Potter (Poncho), Robert Clarke (Manvel), Ray Stevens (El Torro), Ian Young (Rodney), Joan Hamley (Gloria), David Keane (Colonel Lysle), Phyllis Russell (Cora Coot), Vincent Smith (Diego Deli) and Leonie Scarlett (Principal Dancer), joined by an Ensemble

The Box Hill City Drama Group was requested by Council to produce an Australian play for the Centenary of Box Hill in 1957, preferably with a centenary theme. Ashes of Roses by Australian authors Arthur Ashwood and Philip Kelly was presented.

Helen Harris OAM observes that the Council went even further than the local drama group, negotiating with the Tin Pan Alley Players from Melbourne University to present a performance of Aristophane’s comedy The Birds, on 18 June 1957, with dancers from the Ballet Guild. A review in the Eastern Times was less than flattering, commenting on the difficulty for players dressed as birds to speak through their beaks, adding: ‘An Aboriginal corroboree in the original native tongue might have been more suitable’. The reviewer observed that the play had not been performed in Australia since 1890, which ‘seems a dubious recommendation for a star feature of the centenary celebrations’. In conclusion, the reviewer noted that as Aristophanes had been dead for more than 2,000 years, ‘it might have saved a lot of disconcerted Box Hill minds this year if his play had been buried with him’.

The Box Hill Drama Group underwent a name change in 1967 to the Box Hill City Repertory Theatre Company, which operated until 1993.

Another musical group, the Whitehorse Orchestra, was founded in 1969 by Tony Szachas Cook, progressing from a small training orchestra for secondary technical school students to a well-established community orchestra of more than 70 players.

During the 1970s and ‘80s, the orchestra was a chamber group which rehearsed at Box Hill TAFE College Music Department. Its development was assisted by Marion Souter, Andrew Mathers and Kevin Purcell. Music Director Gerald Keuneman OAM has made a significant contribution to the orchestra since 1990. In 2015, the Whitehorse Orchestra travelled to China and presented several concerts. Currently rehearsing at the Box Hill Community Arts Centre, the orchestra has played at many events in the City of Whitehorse and presents three major concerts each year.

Strong youth representation in Box Hill’s theatre history includes shows presented by members of the Scout and Guiding Movements. The 16th Box Hill Scout Group presented The Red and Green Group Show on 29 February,1964 at the Box Hill Town Hall.

Program for The Red and Green Group Show, 29 February 1964

Courtesy of Whitehorse Showtime

In 1965, Rod Savage OAM organised the very first Whitehorse Showtime for the Box Hill District Boy Scouts, based loosely on the Melbourne Gang Show and performed at the Box Hill Town Hall. As times changed, involvement became open to Guides and girls who were members of Scout groups to join the all-male cast.

The original 1965 cast of Whitehorse Showtime. Courtesy of Whitehorse Showtime.

With over 60 consecutive seasons of shows created, produced and performed by Scouts and Guides, Whitehorse Showtime continues to provide quality performing arts training to Scouting and Guiding youth, and entertaining theatre experiences for audiences.

The Box Hill Musical Comedy Society was founded in 1969, and in 1971 the Whitehorse Musical Theatre Company formed as a breakaway group. Their first show, Brigadoon, was presented in the J.H. Charles Memorial Hall at Box Hill High School. Whitehorse Musical Theatre became one of Victoria’s leading non-professional musical theatre groups until the company’s closure in 2011. Fran Boyd, who with her husband Darrell were both Life Members of Whitehorse Musical Theatre Company, explains the reason for the company's closure. ‘This wonderful company gave so much to so many in the Box Hill area before it sadly had to close due to lack of funds and younger people to take over the committee and run the company.’ However, Fran says that several ladies from the company still meet once a month for lunch, ‘as we have wonderful memories of this great theatre company and the many friends we made. So many of our young performers moved on to work in professional theatre and are in shows at present time. It is wonderful to see them and know WMT helped them to make lasting careers here and overseas.’

Applause, Applause, presented by Whitehorse Musical Theatre at the Phoenix Theatre, Burwood in 1983. Photo courtesy of Vicki Arief, Whitehorse Musical Theatre.

NOVA Music Theatre originated in 1972 when the Box Hill Light Opera Company was updated and renamed and continues to present two major musicals per year. The Box Hill Light Opera Company’s last productions were The White Horse Inn and Carousel, presented in the Box Hill High School Hall. The name was changed to NOVA Music Theatre to allow flexibility for the company to present a wider range of musical productions, as well as operatic.

Program cover for the Box Hill Light Opera Co. production of Carousel, 1972

Courtesy of Bill Simpson

Program cover for the NOVA Theatre production of The Boyfriend, 1974

Courtesy of Bill Simpson

NOVA Music Theatre’s first show in 1972 was Camelot, staged in the Alexander Theatre, Clayton. Venues since then have included Kew High School, Nunawading High School, and after presenting Brigadoonin 1986 at the Whitehorse Centre at 379–399 Whitehorse Road, Nunawading, this would remain the company’s performance venue for many years. Construction to rebuild the Whitehorse Centre commenced in 2021 and finished in 2023. In October 2023, NOVA moved into the new state-of-the-art theatre now named ‘The Round’ with seating for 600 plus, to present the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical Cinderella.

Joy Mudge founded the Oxford Children’s Theatre in 1978 when unable to find a good drama class for her granddaughter. The venue was the former Methodist Church on the corner of Oxford and Station Streets, and Joy Mudge lived in the historic Blood Cottage next to the Church.

The Oxford Children’s Theatre Cnr. Oxford and Station Streets, Box Hill. Courtesy of The Box Hill Historical Society.

At least 1200 children attended the Oxford Theatre each week, and performances were presented during the week for schools and for the public at weekends. Selected by audition, the graduates had to train for 18 months before being considered a graduate of the theatre.

Training involved a professional singing teacher, dance teacher, meditation and at the time, what was new to Australia – Feldenkrais movement, which teaches the body balance and control.

The Oxford Children’s theatre won an award for the Best Children’s Theatre in Melbourne.

Students at The Oxford Children’s Theatre, 515 Station St., Box Hill (Cnr. Oxford St.).
Courtesy of The Box Hill Historical Society.

Shows presented by the professional theatrical arts sector in Box Hill include a moving performance at the Whitehorse Centre in 2018 by the now late Aboriginal actor, elder and activist Uncle Jack Charles, a trailblazer for Australian theatre who spent some years of his life living in Box Hill. While there is currently not a dedicated, large-scale theatre in the area, performances from the professional sector can be found at nearby venues, such as The Round.

All live performances, whether professional or non-professional, built on the talents, passion and dedication of actors, singers, dancers, musicians, technicians, production, administrative and backstage teams, have made a magnificent contribution to the cultural fabric of Box Hill since those early days of settlement.

References

Andrew Lemon, Box Hill, Box Hill City Council in conjunction with Lothian Publishing Co Pty Ltd., 1978, pp. 30, 32, 33, 71, 82, 83, 88, 89, 100, 101, 103, 125, 172, 196, 197, 198

Box Hill Historical Society archives

Box Hill Operatic Society. (1934, 23 February). Box Hill Reporter (Vic.: 1925–1950), p. 4. From http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article282265118 (accessed 2 September 2025)

Advertising, Box Hill Reporter (Vic.: 1925–1950), 4 October 1929: 4. Web. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article257224518 (accessed 1 September 2025)

Advertising, Box Hill Reporter (Vic.: 1925–1950), 26 February 1932: 4. Web. 1 Sept 2025 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article282166919 (accessed 1 September 2025)

‘Operatic Club for Box Hill’. (1919, 18 July). The Reporter (Box Hill, Vic.: 1889–1925), p.5. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article257152200  (accessed 31 August 2025)

Box Hill Salvos 2025, ‘About Us’, https://www.salvationarmy.org.au/boxhill/about-us/ (accessed 29 August 2025).

Housewives’ Association of Victoria (1933, June 16). ‘Ava Musical Club’. Box Hill Reporter (Vic.: 1925–1950), p. 2. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article282168422 (accessed 2 September 2025)

Internet Archive, The Red Sombrero1956, Cid Ellwood Operatic Productions https://archive.org/details/metres (accessed 28 August 2025)

NOVA Music Theatre, ‘About’, https://www.novamusictheatre.com.au/about.html (accessed 28 August 2025)

Cheryl Threadgold, In the Name of Theatre: the History, Culture and Voices of Amateur Theatre in Victoria, Cheryl Threadgold, Melbourne, 2020, pp. 47, 214

Whitehorse Historical Society, Newsletter, ‘The Acting Bug’, Series 30, No.6, October-December 2022, p.4. https://whitehorsehistory.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/December-2022-web-FINAL.pdf (accessed 28 August 2025)

Wikipedia,‘Arthur Chanter’, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Chanter (accessed 31 August 2025)

Special thanks to Helen D Harris OAM and the Box Hill Historical Society

Thanks also to

Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne

Lola Brown

Trish Carr

Leanne Fraser

Claudia Funder

Bill Simpson

Caitlin Stevens

State Library Victoria

Whitehorse Showtime