David James

Inscriptionback to top

Inscr. in pencil, lower right: ‘David James as Simon / Ingot. / Sandringham. Jan. 87.’

This portraitback to top

Sydney Prior Hall was a painter and illustrative reporter who worked for the Graphic, a highly influential weekly paper. He was also the artist chosen to record the Prince of Wales’s trip to India in 1875–6, and, in the early 1880s, that of the Marquess of Lorne to Canada.

On 7 January 1887 a party was held at Sandringham to mark the birthday of the Prince of Wales’s eldest son Albert Victor. The highlight was a performance of T.W. Robertson’s play David Garrick, for which ‘a new and confined theatre’ was erected in the ballroom with scenery transported from the Criterion Theatre in London. [1] Charles Wyndham’s popular revival of this play had been running at the Criterion since the previous November.

Hall was dispatched to Norfolk to cover the event for the Graphic. As a royal familiar he was apparently allowed to sketch from the stage, gaining a sweeping view of actors and audience; his pencil sketches were later worked up into a full-page plate for the Graphic, published on 29 January 1887. [2] In this plate Simon Ingot, a wealthy businessman, is shown entering Garrick’s study unseen; he overhears Garrick (Charles Wyndham) comforting his (Ingot’s) daughter Ada (Mary Moore), assuring her that her father’s earlier anger stemmed from the best of intentions. [3] Hall’s sketch catches the moment of realization on old Ingot’s face that Garrick is not, after all, the scoundrel he had thought him. The consensus was that David James played Ingot ‘to perfection’. [4]

Hall’s drawings for the Sandringham performance include Moore (NPG 2370, NPG 2371 and NPG 2372 and Wyndham (NPG 2373) (see for further information on the performance). The drawings were part of a gift of twenty-one sketches given to the National Portrait Gallery by the artist’s son, Dr Harry Reginald Holland Hall, on 17 October 1929.

For other portrait drawings included in H.R. Hall’s gift to the Gallery see NPG Portrait Set ‘Miscellaneous drawings: The Parnell Commission, Members of the House of Lords and the House of Commons by Sydney Prior Hall, circa 1886–1903’.

Carol Blackett-Ord

Footnotesback to top

1) Graphic, 29 Jan. 1887, p.102.
2) Graphic, 29 Jan. 1887, p.109.
3) However, the Graphic (29 Jan. 1887, p.102) provided a different account: ‘The scene shown in our illustration is the last one – in David Garrick’s study, where Garrick (Mr Charles Wyndham) is imploring Ada Ingot (Miss Mary Moore) not to obey her father, Simon Ingot (Mr David James), who comes in unheard and overhears him’ (Graphic). This account does not match Robertson’s plot: see the summary on Wikipedia.
4) Pemberton 1904, p.178.

Physical descriptionback to top

Head-and-shoulders, profile to left, wearing wig tied in a queue.

Conservationback to top

Conserved, 1981.

Provenanceback to top

Given by the artist’s son Harry Reginald Holland Hall, 1929, with other sketches.

View all known portraits for David James