Sir Robert Murray Helpmann

1 portrait matching these criteria:

- subject matching 'In Character'

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

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Sir Robert Murray Helpmann

by Angus McBean
bromide print, 1950
20 in. x 15 7/8 in. (508 mm x 403 mm)
Purchased, 1977
Primary Collection
NPG P61

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. 62 Read entry

    The Australian-born ballet dancer, choreographer, actor and director joined the Vic-Wells ballet in 1933 and became a regular partner to Margot Fonteyn in 1935. His film roles in the 1940s included One of Our Aircraft is Missing (1942), Henry V (1944) and The Red Shoes (1948). Helpmann first played Hamlet in a Covent Garden ballet and then in a play at the New Theatre in 1944, before appearing in a Victorian-dress version at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1948, depicted in this photograph. McBean used a photographic enlargement of text from a copy of Shakespeare's First Folio at the British Museum for the background. The Victorian red-velvet-upholstered chair on which Helpmann sits was also used for Ralph Richardson's toy-theatre portrait and in a previous incarnation was painted white for McBean's 1938 surreal portrait of Jane Baxter.

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Events of 1950back to top

Current affairs

Princess Anne is born at Clarence house, the only daughter of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip.

Art and science

C.S. Lewis publishes The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the first book in the Chronicles of Narnia series. Lewis was an Oxford Don, specialising in Medieval Literature and its use of allegory. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is often seen as an allegory of the Christian struggle between good and evil.

International

Following the Soviet and American withdrawal from the occupation of North and South Korea respectively, the Korean War breaks out as each side seeks to unify Korea under its own political system. While the U.S.A., U.K and other UN nations came to the defence of South Korea, North Korea had support from the Soviet Union and China. The war continued until 1953.

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