“All the World Is a Stage”: The Sketchbooks of Albert Wainwright

Born in the small mining town of Castleford, England, the gifted artist Albert Wainwright (1893-1943) did not live long enough to win the international renown that his schoolmate at the Leeds College of Art, Henry Moore, achieved with his avant-garde sculpture in the 1960s and 1970s. But within the circle of the theater arts scene in the cities of Leeds and Wakefield in West Yorkshire, Wainwright’s legacy lives on in the surviving sketches of costumes and theatrical sets that he produced for the local stage.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

His artwork also survives in a series of original watercolor illustrations and sketchbooks that museum founder, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. purchased from the estate of the artist’s sister, and gifted to The Wolfsonian–Florida International University. Some of these will be featured in an installation opening soon in the foyer of the museum’s rare book and special collections library. Many of Wainwright’s original costumes and sets found their inspiration not only from his fertile imagination, but also from his personal acquaintances. The artist frequently sketched and painted watercolor portraits of actors and performers he knew, and used some of the schoolchildren he taught as models.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Wainwright loved to travel. He regularly spent his summers in the coastal village of Robin Hood’s Bay in North Yorkshire, and some of the locals, buildings, and landscapes appear in his watercolor renderings. But the artist also loved to cross the English Channel to draw inspiration from his excursions on the European continent.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

In the 1930s, Wainwright made the obligatory “grand tour” of Italy, making sketches and watercolors of the street scenes, buildings, and inhabitants of Milan and Venice. He creatively decorated the cover of his Italian sketchbook with a collage of memorabilia, including everything from wine labels, postage stamps, ticket stubs, stickers, and magazine clippings.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Unsurprisingly, Wainwright sketched and made watercolor paintings of the most famous buildings, piazzas, bridges, and canals of the Italian cities.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Given his interest in producing theater sets, however, Wainwright often focused on the details of more ordinary buildings as if to suggest their potentiality as a painted theatrical backdrop.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Ever on the lookout for costume ideas, he employed his pen and brush to capture the nuances of the clothing worn by altar and choir boys, as well as the uniforms of sailors, carabinieri, and Balillas, an Italian Fascist youth organization established by Benito Mussolini.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Other sketches from life capture images of some of the more picturesque locals who could easily be imagined as costumed characters in a play.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Wainwright traveled most frequently to Germany from the late 1920s through the 1930s, always recording his visits with snatches of musical notation, written descriptions of his impressions of cities, towns, and the characters he encountered, and, of course, watercolor renderings of the same.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The artist frequently convinced locals, and most especially young men, to pose as models, and he endeavored to capture every detail of their clothes as well as their immediate surroundings.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

These trips also provided him with inspiration for costumes and theater backdrops, and he filled numerous sketchbooks with ethnic and regional clothing and city and rural landscapes to be transformed into theatrical costumes and sets.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Wainwright was especially fascinated by developments in Germany in the tumultuous years of the late 1920s and 1930s. His watercolors document the contrasts between the uninhibited cabaret life and ethos of the twenties and the suffocating rise of the National Socialists and their disciplined and regimented Hitler Youth, whom he depicted marching under the gathering clouds of impending war in the late nineteen-thirties.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Those of you living in or planning to visit Miami Beach this fall should plan on visiting The Wolfsonian museum and coming up to the library to see more of Albert Wainwright’s theatrical designs and travel sketchbooks.

~ by "The Chief" on August 19, 2023.