Theater costume design for “Madeleine de Valette”
Date1909
Artist
Howard Pyle
(American illustrator, 1853–1911)
Illustration CitationTheater costume design for the play "Springtime" written by Booth Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson, produced by Frederic Thompson, ran at the Liberty Theater in New York from October through December 1909.
MediumWatercolor on paper
Dimensionscomposition: 21 × 11 1/4 in. (53.3 × 28.6 cm)
sheet: 24 × 15 1/4 in. (61 × 38.7 cm)
sheet: 24 × 15 1/4 in. (61 × 38.7 cm)
Credit LineGayle and Alene Hoskins Endowment Fund, 2016
Object number2016-8
On View
Not on viewClassificationsDRAWING
Label TextThese are two of fourteen watercolor costume designs that Howard Pyle created in 1909 for the Broadway play Springtime. A musical romance set in Louisiana in 1815, Springtime ran for 79 performances at New York’s Liberty Theater. Pyle designed the costumes with his usual historical exactitude. Pose and expression reflect the dramatic roles of the characters, including the demure Madeleine de Valette and her suitor Gilbert Steele. He modeled them on the couple in his painting When All the World was Young (at left). Publicity and newspaper show that the costumes in the play—especially Madeleine’s white Empire-style dress, which signals her upper class status—followed Pyle’s designs, with some minimal variations.
At Springtime’s opening, the watercolors were displayed in the theater lobby. According to the critic on The New York Sun, “oddly enough,..none of the costumes on stage looked half as beautiful as these sketches did.”
