J. Comyns Carr

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

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

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

Early life and family J. Comyns Carr was born in Marylebone, Middlesex, England, the seventh of ten children. His parents were Jonathan Carr, a woollen draper, and his Irish wife, Catherine Grace Comyns. Kate Comyns Carr, his sister, became a portrait artist; his brother Jonathan Carr developed the world's first garden suburb Bedford Park. Comyns Carr was educated at Bruce Castle School, Tottenham, Middlesex, from 1862 to 1865. He soon gave up law for a career in journalism and became drama critic for the Echo.

In 1873 in Dresden, Carr married the author Alice Laura Vansittart née Strettell (1850–1927), a novelist and designer. Alice designed the bold costume that Ellen Terry wore as Lady Macbeth, and in which John Singer Sargent painted her in 1889. Sargent also painted Mrs Comyns Carr in 1889 and several portraits of her sister, Alma, and illustrated Alma's Spanish and Italian Folk-Songs in 1897. Carr and his wife had three children: Philip, Dorothy and Arthur (a barrister and Liberal Member of Parliament).

Career

Art

In 1873, Carr became an art critic for the Pall Mall Gazette. The same year, in The Globe, he wrote a series of widely read articles about contemporary artists. Dante Gabriel Rossetti took notice of these and befriended him. Carr was a strong critic of the art establishment, decrying what he saw as its short-sightedness. This spectacular production was a success for Irving and ran for over 100 performances, also touring North America.

Carr collaborated with Arthur Wing Pinero and Arthur Sullivan on The Beauty Stone, an opera billed as a "romantic musical drama", at the Savoy Theatre in 1898. The Faustian theme was not what the Savoy audiences were used to, and the piece never found an audience, closing after fifty performances. Carr's adaptation of Oliver Twist was produced by Herbert Beerbohm Tree at His Majesty's Theatre, London (1905). It was also produced on Broadway in 1905 and 1912. From 1899 to 1904, after Irving transferred control of the Lyceum, Carr managed the theatre. This was followed by an adaptation of Goethe's Faust, for Tree in 1908, in collaboration with Stephen Phillips.

Books by Carr Drawings by the Old Masters, 1877 The Abbey Church of St Albans, 1877 Examples of Contemporary Art, 1878 Essays on Art, 1879 Hubert Herkomer, 1882 Art in Provincial France, 1883 Frederick Walker: An Essay, 1885 Papers on Art, 1885 Exhibition of Works of Sir Edward Burne-Jones 1898 Some Eminent Victorians; Personal Recollections in the World of Art and Letters, 1908 Coasting Bohemia, 1914 The Ideals of Painting, 1917 (published posthumously).