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Dion Boucicault

4 of 8 portraits of Dion Boucicault

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Dion Boucicault

by Frederick Sem
watercolour and pencil, 1869 or after
10 1/8 in. x 6 7/8 in. (257 mm x 175 mm)
Purchased with help from the Friends of the National Libraries and the Pilgrim Trust, 1966
Reference Collection
NPG D957

Sitterback to top

Artistback to top

  • Frederick Sem (circa 1835-active 1891), Artist. Artist or producer of 5 portraits.

Events of 1869back to top

Current affairs

Gladstone introduces the Irish Church Disestablishment Act, which disestablishes the Church of Ireland, disassociating it from the state and repealing the paying of tithes to the Anglican Church of Ireland.
Girton College is founded in Cambridge by Barbara Bodichon and Emily Davies, the first residential college for women in England; women were granted full membership to the University in 1948.

Art and science

Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev invents the periodic table of elements, which arranges elements within a group in order of their atomic mass.
The British scientist Mary Somerville publishes her last book On Molecular and Microscopic Science.
Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir paint together in the open air at La Grenouillère, developing the Impressionist style.

International

The Suez canal opens, linking the Red Sea and the Gulf of Suez with the Mediterranean Sea, and transforming trade routes between Europe and Asia as merchants no longer had to circumvent Africa. The canal was largely in British and French control until Egyptian nationalisation in 1956, which sparked off the international Suez crisis.
Serialisation of Leo Tolstoy's epic novel of Russian society during the Napoleonic wars, War and Peace finishes.

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Robert Whelan

29 July 2018, 16:04

This image forms part of a group including NPG D958 and NPG D2105. Frederick Balsir Chatterton, lessee of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, produced Dion Boucicault's melodrama 'Formosa' in August 1869. The play was both a great success and a great scandal as the eponymous heroine is a successful prostitute. Chatterton was attacked for desecrating the stage of what was regarded as the National Theatre with such an unsavoury play and the Lord Chamberlain was criticised for licensing it. The Lord Chamberlain asked his Examiner of Plays why a licence had been issued without referring the matter up to him personally. However, he declined to revoke the licence. 'Formosa' ran continuously for 117 nights, making it the longest running play in the history of Drury Lane.