John Lawrence Toole

Later Victorian Portraits Catalogue Entry

Sitter in 38 portraits
Beginning his acting career at the age of twenty-two, for nearly forty years he sustained a position at or near the summit of his adopted profession. He was considered to be a master of the twin staples of Victorian entertainment, farce and domestic melodrama, and it was this dual ability that helped him remain dominant for so long. In 1879 he became the resident manager of the Folly Theatre. It was relaunched as Toole's Theatre, thus making him the first actor to have a West End theatre named after him. In his day his popularity was such that in 1870 he starred nightly at two theatres in different plays, but his repertory died with him, and in the twentieth century he was all but forgotten.