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Beggarstaff Brothers - Poster Advertising the Christmas Pantomime Cinderella at Drury Lane - 1895
Beggarstaffs opens with a magnificent curtain-raiser – the facade of a neoclassical theatre, recreated, towering before you in spotlit darkness. This is Drury Lane in the winter of 1895. Between the high columns hangs a poster advertising the Christmas pantomime, a colossal image of a blond Cinderella turning her head away from us, longingly watching a scarlet coach disappear down a road lined with dark railings. The poster is amazingly spare – only three colours, the forms reduced to a stark minimum against the barest white backdrop. Only a fraction of Cinderella’s broom is shown; the railings are no more than floating verticals. The mind’s eye envisages everything else. How it must have stood out in the London fog, 10ft wide with all its force and clarity, as dramatic as the performance itself. Cinderella is by the Beggarstaffs, pseudonym of two young painters who sidestepped conventional education to produce some of the most spectacular works of graphic art in British history - Laura Cumming
Size: 6491px × 4864px
Photo credit: © poster art / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
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