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James Evershed Agate

4 of 21 portraits of James Evershed Agate

Angus McBean Photograph. © Harvard Theatre Collection, Harvard University.

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James Evershed Agate

by Angus McBean
vintage bromide print, 1947
15 in. x 12 in. (381 mm x 305 mm)
Purchased, 1995
Primary Collection
NPG P617

Sitterback to top

Artistback to top

  • Angus McBean (1904-1990), Photographer. Artist or producer associated with 283 portraits, Sitter in 79 portraits.

Linked publicationsback to top

  • Pepper, Terence, Angus McBean Portraits, 2006 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from 5 July to 22 October 2006), p. 61 Read entry

    McBean’s choice of James Agate as the first subject in an important new series of weekly portraits of leading men of the theatre turned out to be somewhat unfortunate: Agate died at his home in Holborn on 7 June, only days after being photographed. As theatre critic for The Sunday Times from 1923, film critic for The Tatler and a contributor to many other publications, Agate was a prolific writer. He combined all these outpourings in his nine volumes of autobiographical musings, Ego, which appeared from 1935 onwards. In 1943 Agate moved to Alexandra Mansions in Grape Street, close to McBean’s studio, which he regularly visited. An archive in the Harvard Theatre Collection shows that before McBean made his comeback to theatrical photography with his pictures of Clare Luce, he had taken sittings of Agate and then Kenneth Tynan, who was to take over as the leading theatre critic of the day. Less well known were the figure studies that Agate commissioned from McBean of the off-duty guardsmen whom he enticed to his flat. Agate, pictured in his characteristic baggy overcoat, is shown here in front of a photographic enlargement that McBean had made of a playbill from 1877, the year of the weary critic's birth.

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Events of 1947back to top

Current affairs

Princess Elizabeth marries Philip Mountbatten at Westminster Abbey. Philip renounced his title of Prince of Greece and Denmark, to become Duke of Edinburgh when he married the heir to the throne.

Art and science

The first Edinburgh Festival includes performances by Kathleen Ferrier, Alec Guinness and Margot Fonteyn. The Festival is now a major annual international arts event that takes place over three weeks every August, and includes top class performers in theatre, music and dance as well as lesser-known performers who take part in the parallel 'Fringe Festival'.

International

India is granted independence from the British Empire and the former British Raj is partitioned into India and Pakistan. After various revolts and several years of civil disobedience led by Gandhi and his Quit India Movement, Britain agrees to disband the Raj and grant independence to India.
Palestine is partitioned into a Jewish State, an Arab State and a small internationally administered zone.

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