The year is 1861 and the day after Christmas—it’s time for our pantomime—which just happens to be, this year, Harlequin Valentine and Orson; or, The Task of Romance and the Tricks of the Spirit of Fun, and arriving in Melbourne, just two days before, is the All England Eleven, among which is my great grandfather Charles Lawrence, a member of the team who went on to stay in Australia and ultimately, take on tour to the United Kingdom in 1867, a team of Aboriginal cricketers. I can’t help but wonder—did he get to see that pantomime that December? He certainly became acquainted, at a much later date, with the Coppin family when his daughter Millicent became acquainted with George’s daughter Daisie.
Stephenson’s Team of English Cricketers in Australia—24 December 1861
Author’s collection
Enough of that—what of the actual production? Although Coppin is not listed as its director, between 1856 and 1869 its author (or adaptor) William Mower Akhurst created ten Christmas pantomimes for the Theatre Royal in Bourke Street and the name John Hennings, as scenic artist/designer, appears over and over. In 1856 George Coppin and Gustavus Brooke had become the Theatre Royal’s new managers and owners—a partnership which lasted a mere three years—but Coppin proceeded to direct the theatre’s plays, operas and pantomimes all through the 1860s—and way, way beyond.
Returning to Harlequin Valentine and Orson in 1861, the glorification of Burke and Wills— ‘these brave men’—was painted by Hennings as the very fitting finale to the production. One can only try to imagine this artwork in full colour, rather than the detailed black and white drawing shown here!
Apotheosis of Burke & Wills
National Library of Australia, Canberra
Melbourne Library and torchlight procession, November 1867
State Library of New South Wales, Sydney
John Hennings in 1868
State Library of Victoria, Melbourne
From the early 1840s through to the mid 1890s George Coppin would have employed or involved a countless number of ‘creatives’—set and costume designers, scenic artists, costume makers, propsmen—not to mention the stage managers and crews—but only one name really stands out—occurs over and over again—that of John Hennings whose career here in Australia ran from the mid 1850s to the late 1890s. There are other names, collaborators and assistants but I am using Hennings’ 1860s pantomime involvement as a basis. There were literally dozens more productions where Coppin’s name appears in the listings available to us, although many, of course, were simply repeats, the same panto or play presented in a different theatre or state.
In 1855 at the age of twenty John Hennings (Johann Friederich Hennings), son of Danish-born parents, arrived in Melbourne, attracted as so many were, by the Victorian Gold Fields. He already had some decorating and artistic experience and it was not long before he found work as a scenic artist in various theatres, in Adelaide, Geelong, Sydney and Melbourne, and not long before he began his long association with George Coppin, with the Theatre Royal, the Princess’s and the Haymarket theatres, and also the Cremorne Gardens’ Pantheon Theatre. For at least three decades he dominated Melbourne’s stage design, responsible for an enormous body of work on plays, pantomimes and operas—backdrops and front-cloths, flats and borders, and most famously, panoramas. During the 1860s he worked with, mentored or was assisted by, Alfred Clint, William Pitt snr, William J. Wilson, Benjamin Tannett and Messrs. Freyberger, Fry, Holmes and Opie—and no doubt many others—to some of whom we shall return shortly.
In 1863 to celebrate the wedding of Prince Albert and Princess Alexandra, Hennings and one Benjamin Tannett painted transparencies that were displayed on the city’s buildings, and four years later when the Duke and Duchess of York visited an illumination was incorporated in the pantomime at the Theatre Royal here—Tom Tom, the Piper’s Son, and Mary Mary, Quite Contrary; or, Harlequin Piggy Wiggy, and the Good Child’s History of England.
Other celebrations that year, 1867, included transparent scenes depicting the Aboriginal cricket team, prior to their departing Australian shores—scenes ‘showing their progress from utter barbarism to the highest state of civilization’! In Sydney, on board the royal vessel Galatea, Hennings painted a view of Windsor Castle for the Duke and Duchess.
Returning to 1863, Hennings and Tannett created the artwork for a moving panorama of European Grand Tour views—these were exhibited at the Melbourne Polytechnic Institute in Bourke Street East. And for the 1869 pantomime The House that Jack Built; or, Harlequin Progress and the Loves, Laughs, Laments and Labours of Jack Melbourne and Little Victoria, Hennings presented another moving panorama, a complex allegory that symbolized Melbourne’s growth and development and incorporated transportation scenes that could also stand as quite separate and distinct works of art, while still keeping within the form or frame of a theatre piece.
The painter Frederick McCubbin was said to be most impressed by Hennings’ work, as were the critics, who praised consistently, although not without the odd quibble. During the 1860s Hennings had joined the management of the Theatre Royal, in partnership with Coppin, Richard Stewart (father of Nellie and Docie) and Henry Richard Harwood.
Hennings was known to construct small 3-dimensional models to scale in order to see how separate planes could be translated into a single painted surface. He would employ this technique if he needed to incorporate figures within the back-cloth’s composition. Set designers in the latter part of the 19th century tended to use a scale of half an inch to the foot (12 inches) or 1:24—not all that different to the scale often used now of 1:25.
Late 19th century set model—Bland Holt production
State Library Victoria, Melbourne
Colour blocks reduced to powder
Walker & Skelly
Initial designs or models were generally executed in watercolour (or gouache)—the firm of Winsor & Newton was established in London in 1832 and produced many one-shilling hand-books on art—with titles such as ‘painting in watercolour and oil’, ‘the elements of perspective’, ‘the art of mural decoration’ and so on. But for the stage-cloths the designer’s assistant, or colourman, utilizing a mortar and pestle, would grind blocks of colour to a very fine powder, then mix this with size, a liquid glue obtained from boiling rabbit bones and skin. This enabled the paint to bond to canvas, hessian or wood. If size had not been added to the paint, or distemper, would flake or rub off. Oil paint, a different beast altogether, could also be the medium but presumably a more expensive alternative, although probably necessary when decorating glass to create a transparent effect.
Hennings continued to be involved with the Theatre Royal’s plays and pantomimes through to the 1890s. His work on panoramas and cycloramas also continued and we are fortunate that his 1892 cyclorama of Early Melbourne has managed to survive and has been meticulously and lovingly preserved at the State Library of Victoria.
Born in 1820 in Sunderland, England, William Pitt arrived in Australia just two years prior to Hennings. He became associated with George Coppin both as a publican—when he died in 1879 he was the licensee of the Theatre Royal’s Café de Paris—and as a scenic artist when he collaborated with Hennings, William J. Wilson, Benjamin Tannett and Signor Arrigoni. In 1867 Pitt was the principal scenic artist on the Royal Haymarket production of Harlequin Rumpelstiltskin; or, the Demon Dwarf of the Goblin Gold Mines, and the Prince and the Miller’s Daughter. The pantomime ended with a Grand Transformation Scene: A Harlequinade—played out in ‘three well-known shops in a somewhat prominent street’ and a Melbourne telegraph office. In 1870 Pitt became the first treasurer of the Victorian Academy of Art where his paintings were exhibited. His son William Pitt jnr was born in 1855 and trained as an architect, ultimately designing, rebuilding or improving theatres in Melbourne and Ballarat, Hobart, Sydney and New Zealand. In the 1880s, after Pitt snr’s death, Coppin commissioned son William to design what became Gordon House, in Melbourne’s Little Bourke Street.
Roughly ten years after Hennings, English artist Alfred Clint (1842–1923) arrived on these shores. His father was a painter and scenic artist, his grandfather an ARA portraitist, his brothers and uncles all artists. Initially Alfred assisted Hennings at the Theatre Royal and contributed to many of the pantomimes, before moving to Sydney in the late 1860s, where he continued to work in several Sydney theatres, as well as join the staff of Sydney Punch—and later The Bulletin—as a cartoonist. Most notably Clint painted settings for the 1867 pantomime Tom Tom, the Piper’s Son, and Mary Mary, Quite Contrary; or, Harlequin Piggy Wiggy, and the Good Child’s History of England, one of the many entertainments enjoyed by Prince Alfred (the Duke of Edinburgh), during his royal visit. Apprenticed to their father, all three of Clint’s sons became artists and scenic painters, well and truly upholding the family tradition!
Railway to Circular Quay—sketch by Alfred Clint
State Library of New South Wales, Sydney
Reverting to 1857, and two years after Hennings’ appearance on these shores, 47-year-old English-born Benjamin Tannett arrived in Melbourne, travelling via Swiftsure from Plymouth, with his second wife Isabelle and Joseph, a son from his first marriage. Tannett was an established theatrical scene-painter and actor, and in no time at all he was employed by Coppin and was working alongside ‘the master’ John Hennings. In 1858 Tannett and William Pitt snr had painted ‘a very beautiful act-drop with a representation of Shakespeare’s birthplace’ for Melbourne’s redecorated Theatre Royal. In 1861 at the Princess’s Theatre Tannett was scenic artist on Harlequin Mother Hubbard and Puss in Boots, creating a ‘beautiful panorama of Australian scenery—corn field, vineyards (they may be), and bush’. Two years later Tannett and Hennings collaborated on the panorama of European Grand Tour views, as mentioned earlier. Sadly, the following year, 1864, and after a short illness, Benjamin Tannett died in Geelong, presumably due to a heart condition: a career cut tragically short at the early age of 54.
Also arriving in Melbourne the same year as Hennings, was the actor, manager and scene painter William J. Wilson, whose father and grandfather were both artists of some repute. Son William worked in Melbourne and Sydney’s theatres, visited New Zealand in 1863 before returning here, only to move permanently to Sydney. He was considered to be that city’s answer to an artist of Hennings’ calibre; he worked on plays, operas, pantomimes and moving panoramas. In Sydney he formed a partnership with Alexander Habbe (1829–1896), a Danish scene painter who had also headed here, initially—along with so many others—for the Victorian goldfields in the 1850s.
Other scene painters who worked with or for Hennings during the 1860s (and beyond) included Mouritz Freyberger, Charles Fry, Henry Holmes, Messrs. Liddle and Douglas, and Patrick (Joseph) Little. This last-named arrived in Australia from Dublin in 1860 and worked as a scenic artist in Victoria, South Australia, New South Wales and Tasmania. He and his descendants established a studio specialising in scenic art in the Melbourne suburb of Carlton. The company survived through to 1918.
Patrick Joseph Little
Peter Little Collection
William J. Wilson
Australian Variety Theatre Archive
German-born Mouritz Freyberger (1838–1886) at the age of 24 was working as a scene painter in Melbourne theatres but was also established as a professional photographer. He assisted Hennings in 1864 at the Theatre Royal with the ‘splendid pictorial effects’ for the pantomime The Enchanted Isle, first performed here in 1857, but adapted from William and Robert Brough’s 1848 (London) burlesque extravaganza. Robert’s son—also named Robert—is best known as a co-founder, in 1886, of the Brough-Boucicault Comedy Company. The full title of the production: The Enchanted Isle; or, Harlequin the Mysterious Prince and the Magician Father; or, Raising the Wind on the Most Approved Principles was described as a ‘travesty of Shakespeare’s Tempest’. For the 1867 visit of the Duke of Edinburgh Freyberger painted a large transparency for Robertson’s Collins Street bookshop, to illustrate the saying ‘The sun never sets on the British dominions’. A painted illusion of the façade of the Melbourne Public Library (now State Library of Victoria) was also commissioned for the same occasion. He worked often with Hennings, and sometimes as the chief painter, as with a production of the Princess’s Theatre’s Frou Frou in 1870. He moved to India where he lived for many years only to return here in 1886, arriving back a mere five days before his untimely death at the age of 48.
The Enchanted Isle—illustration for original production in London in 1848
Adelphi Theatre Calendar
Watercolour painting of landscape by W.J. Wilson, c.1865
Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne
Costume makers were almost invariably women—Mrs. Hancock, Mrs. Croucher and Mrs. Jager/Jagar—the designs generally adapted from those used earlier in English productions or from traditional sources. Costumes are listed as being made, rather than designed. Interesting to speculate just who brought it upon themselves to transport designs or sketches from ‘the old country’… (Later pantomimes give us the names of designers such as Alfred Maltby, London’s Monsieur and Madame Alias, Madame Beaumont, Atillio Comelli and Australian-born Will R. Barnes. Multi-talented Maltby was also an actor and playwright.) James Brogden and Mr. Dennis are listed as propsmen and Herr James Cushla was also a technician and a mask-maker. It is recorded that this last-named arrived in Melbourne from Plymouth, on the same vessel Swiftsure as Benjamin Tannett, in late 1857, with his wife and two young daughters, and also, in the company of a troupe of ‘tableau performers’. Another of many talents, Cushla had, in addition to his technical and mask-making skills, a long career here as a living statue, appearing first at Cremorne Gardens, only weeks after arriving here. Over the next 26 years he created a repertoire of more than one hundred poses and tableaux.
Mother Goose pantomime—Attilio Comelli (1858–1925)
Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne
Grimaldi’s costume in the role of Orson in Valentine and Orson, London, 1806
Harvard Theatre Collection
I have concentrated on perhaps the rather too obvious ‘creatives’ of the 1860s but plainly, there are so many more stories to be told, and in the decades to follow, for example, those of Phil Goatcher, John Brunton, William R. Coleman, George Gordon and Walter Brookes Spong. Whether these tales are of the scenic artist, his assistant, the costume-maker or mask-maker, what rich and interesting times—times of which much has been written and which will certainly continue to be written.
Late 19th century set pieces
Miles Kenyon Collection
Late 19th century water-colour sketch for back-cloth
Miles Kenyon Collection
Life spans of twelve scenic artists:
Benjamin Tannett—1810–1864
William Pitt (senior)—1819–1879
William J. Wilson—1833–1909
John Hennings—1835–1898
Mouritz Freyberger—1838–1886
George Gordon—1839–1899
Patrick Joseph Little—1840–1907
Alfred Clint—1842–1923
John Brunton—1849–1909
Walter Brookes Spong—1851–1929
Phil Goatcher—1852–1931
William Rowland Coleman—1864–1932
With grateful thanks to the following sources:
Raymond Walker & David Skelly, Backdrop to a Legend, Self published limited edition, 2018
Mimi Colligan, Canvas Documentaries, Melbourne University Press, 2002
Alec Bagot, Coppin the Great, Melbourne University Press, 1965
Anita Callaway, Visual Ephemera: Theatrical art in 19th century Australia, University New South Wales Press, 2000
Viola Tait, Dames, Principal Boys…..and All That, Macmillan, 2001
AusStage
Australian Variety Theatre Archive
State Library Victoria, Melbourne
Wikipedia
