The Victorian painter responsible for the beautiful glass mosaic in St Paul’s Cathedral is confusingly named. His father was a great friend and admirer of the poet, painter and visionary William Blake, so gave his son Blake’s name.
George Richmond couldn’t have known his son’s namesake would cast such a big shadow. But Willliam Blake Richmond is a respected artist in his own right and, in his one-man play, Rory Fellowes (brother of ‘Downton Abbey’ man Julian) attempts to introduce us to the man himself. Born in 1842, Blake became known as a portraitist who painted a raft of Victorian bigwigs such as Charles Darwin, Prince von Bismarck and Florence Nightingale.
Played with great humility and warmth by Nigel Dunbar, we meet an artist nearing the end of his life but full of a sprightly, cheeky confidence. Richmond speaks out to the audience as if we had arrived for a class. What we get is not a lecture in painting, but in Richmond’s life.
There’s little drama to the show. We watch as Richmond packs up his paintings and belongings from his studio – a meticulously detailed set from Tim Dann – and explains, among much else, the detailed research for his life’s masterpiece: the mosaics, which took him 13 years to complete. The show is really a history of art lesson.
This also occasionally makes it difficult to believe Richmond is talking. The character is so self analytical and self referential, at times you feel he’s just Dunbar in a wig spouting a biography written by Fellowes.
Still, ‘A Victorian Eye’ is an undeniably engaging and oft enlightening portrait of a man whose name certainly deserves to be better known.
By Daisy Bowie-Sell