Bessie Bellwood

Bessie Bellwood, by Unknown artist,  -NPG 3968 - © National Portrait Gallery, London

© National Portrait Gallery, London

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Bessie Bellwood

by Unknown artist
Pen and brown ink on card
6 1/8 in. x 3 5/8 in. (155 mm x 92 mm)
NPG 3968

This portraitback to top

Bessie Bellwood, a ‘serio-comic vocalist’ [1] and ‘Gem of Comedy’ [2], was a popular music hall star. Early on criticized for quietness, [3] she soon found her stride as a fearless, ‘lippy’ performer, enjoying noisy slanging matches with the audience. In the 1880s and early 1890s she was known as ‘the rowdiest dare-devil of the lot’. [4] Years later the songwriter Richard Morton remembered her working the hall with witty repartees:

Onto the stage she would bounce to a roar of welcome. ‘All right’ – to an admirer in a private box – ‘don’t open your mouth so wide. You’ll cut your throat with your collar.’ The result was a louder guffaw than before. ‘That’s wider. Now I can see what you had for your dinner.’ Sometimes she was smart; sometimes just a little vulgar. But always, she enjoyed a licence that would be permitted to no performer today. [5]

George Bernard Shaw, another admirer, thought Bellwood’s secret was ‘an exquisite accuracy of tune and rhythm’. [6]

In Bellwood’s relatively limited portraiture NPG 3968 is a wonderfully lively image. Wearing short skirts and a bustle she leans over the footlights, gloved hand cupped to mouth to project the louder across the hall. The artist, a brilliant draughtsman, has not been identified. It seems the figure was sketched from the auditorium and the head, drawn with a needle-fine pen (and in darker ink), laid in on a separate occasion. There are four cuts to the bottom of the card, perhaps for vertical display. The drawing is dated circa 1880s on the basis of photographs of Bellwood at the time, before a decline into general seediness in the 1890s.

The drawing was offered as a gift by Cyril Hughes Hartmann in July 1955, and gladly accepted for the Reference Collection at the Trustees meeting in October. [7] Hartmann (1896–1967) was a seventeenth-century historian whose works included the bestseller The King My Brother (1954), and from 1942 to 1951 he was a historical adviser to the British film industry.

Carol Blackett-Ord

Footnotesback to top

1) Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 18 Aug. 1889.
2) Her description in advertisements for the Royal Music Hall, Holborn; see The Times, p.1, at various dates between 1885 and 1889.
3) Royal Music Hall manager to Bellwood’s agent: ‘She won’t do. She’s too quiet.’ See Disher 1974, p.22.
4) Disher 1974, p.20.
5) Era, 1 Apr. 1914.
6) Shaw 1997, p.98.
7) The drawing was accessioned NPG 3968 in Oct. 1955. At an unknown later date it was transferred from the Reference to the Primary Collection.

Physical descriptionback to top

Whole-length on stage, left leg advanced, right hand raised to open mouth, left fist clenched, her figure uplit by three stage lights.

Conservationback to top

Conserved, 1982.

Provenanceback to top

Given by Cyril Hughes Hartmann, 1955.

View all known portraits for Bessie Bellwood