Miss Julia Marlowe in "The Cavalier" / Act III / "Don't make a move! You're outnumbered three to one"

Miss Julia Marlowe in "The Cavalier" / Act III / "Don't make a move! You're outnumbered three to one"
Miss Julia Marlowe in "The Cavalier" / Act III / "Don't make a move! You're outnumbered three to one"

Miss Julia Marlowe in "The Cavalier" / Act III / "Don't make a move! You're outnumbered three to one"

Date1902
Artist (American painter and illustrator, 1868–1922)
Illustration CitationHarper's Weekly, January 10, 1903. Scene from George Washington Cable's play The Cavalier.
MediumGouache, watercolor, and ink on paper
Dimensions16 9/16 × 18 1/8 in. (42.1 × 46 cm)
Credit LineGift of John Sloan Memorial Foundation, 1982
Object number1982-14
On View
Not on view
ClassificationsDRAWING
Label TextHarry C. Edwards depicted Julia Marlowe’s 1903 appearance in The Cavalier. She played the mistress of a Civil War-era Louisiana mansion who becomes a Confederate spy. Here she directs Confederate soldiers to seize Union captives who have been conspiring during their detention. As guns appear, the Union soldiers realize their fate, and a young girl in the lower left shrinks from the violence. Marlowe’s commanding figure is accented by the long columnar lines of her black and white attire. With a quiet gesture and reassuring expression, she stands calmly amid the chaos at the play’s climactic moment.

The Cavalier was adapted from a novel by George Washington Cable, one of many authors of the period who portrayed the Confederacy in a romanticized and idyllic light.


IMLS Logo