Moira Shearer

© estate of Robin Craig Guthrie / National Portrait Gallery, London

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Moira Shearer

by Robin Craig Guthrie
oil on canvas, circa 1946
17 1/2 in. x 13 in. (444 mm x 330 mm)
Purchased, 1988
Primary Collection
NPG 5974

Sitterback to top

Artistback to top

  • Robin Craig Guthrie (1902-1971), Painter. Artist or producer of 20 portraits, Sitter in 1 portrait.

Linked publicationsback to top

  • Clerk, Honor, The Sitwells, 1994 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from 14 October - 22 January 1995), p. 214 Read entry

    Sacheverell first saw the beautiful red-haired ballerina and actress Moira Shearer (b. 1926), when she took over the role of Princess Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty from Margot Fonteyn at Covent Garden in the spring of 1946. Although she had become a principal at Sadlers Wells two years previously, it was in effect her first big break. Sacheverell was enchanted, wrote her an extravagant fan letter and three weeks later fell wildly in love with her over lunch.1

    An intelligent, well-educated Scots girl, Shearer weathered the showers of presents and passionate letters that poured from Sacheverell, while at the same time benefitting from his knowledge and experience of the ballet. Reluctantly accepting her as his inaccessible muse, Sacheverell followed her career closely, sending her poems when she flew off on tour to America and swapping gossip about the Covent Garden ballet world when he was working with Oliver Messel on the abortive film The Sleeping Beauty for Alexander Korda.2 His ardour survived Shearer’s marriage to (Sir) Ludovic Kennedy in 1950, and although it cooled gradually over the succeeding years they remained close friends and frequent correspondents until his death. Shearer and Pearl Argyle, the two ballerinas whom he loved, haunt much of his later poetic work, from Cupid and the Jacaranda to the poems of the Brackley booklets.

    Robin Guthrie’s portrait of the young ballerina is one of several he painted at his studio in 5 Albion Street, and this thoughtful study dates from the year in which she became a principal at Sadlers Wells In 1947, when she had begun filming Powell’s and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes (with which she made herself unforgettable the world over), Guthrie exhibited a painting of her as ‘Spring’ in the summer exhibition of the Royal Academy.

    1 Sarah Bradford, Sacheverell Sitwell, Splendours and Miseries, 1993, pp 333-4.

    2 Ibid., pp 353-4.

  • Saywell, David; Simon, Jacob, Complete Illustrated Catalogue, 2004, p. 560

Events of 1946back to top

Current affairs

The new Labour government begins to act upon the recommendations of the Beveridge Report (1942) by nationalising The Bank of England and Imperial Communications, bringing in a National Insurance Bill, and setting plans for the National Health Service. Nationalisation of industry and the provision of free healthcare and welfare were the main aims of post-war domestic politics.

Art and science

Mervyn Peake publishes Titus Groan; the first of his Gormenghast Trilogy. The three novels are regarded as classics of the fantasy genre, although they contain no magic or intelligent non-human characters, so might more appropriately be described as belonging to the 'gothic' or 'fantastic' genre.

International

Nazi officials are tried for their part in the War and the Holocaust at Nuremberg. The trials were to prosecute war criminals and the location was chosen because it was the site of the annual Nazi rallies, and therefore seen as a fitting place for the demise of the party. The Nuremberg Trials paved the way for post-war developments in international criminal law.

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