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

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

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