The exhibition, featuring eight oil paintings of characters from Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot, opened to the public on 29 June, the day before the Theatre Royal Haymarket Company’s play opened at St James Theatre in Wellington. The exhibition will be on view until 13 July 2010.
The portraits include depictions of Sir Ian McKellen as Estragon, Roger Rees as Vladimir and Matthew Kelly as Pozzo. Following a record breaking season at London’s Theatre Royal, all three actors have reprised their roles for the New Zealand tour of Waiting for Godot. The series of paintings also features a portrait of director Sean Mathias and other cast members who have played the roles in London including Patrick Stewart as Vladimir, Ronald Pickup as Lucky, Simon Callow as Pozzo and George Sear as Boy.
Nick hopes that the Godot series will continue to grow after seeing Brendan O’Hea’s performance as Lucky in Wellington. “I am positive a painting will once again suggest itself.”
Before beginning work on the paintings, Nick sat in on preview performances and dress rehearsals to get familiar with the play and the characters.
“The whole experience of making the paintings was wonderful. As a painter who is keenly engaged in portraiture it was such an interesting experience to paint what is at once both a completely fictional character and also a real flesh and blood human being – an experience that is so unique to theatre.”
The series of paintings was originally shown at the Royal Circle Bar of the Haymarket Theatre in London during the Theatre Royal Haymarket Company’s successful 2009 season and were presented to the actors as opening night gifts, at the suggestion of Sir Ian McKellen.
Since initially viewing Beckett’s play last year, Nick continues to be inspired by it,
“The play contains so much about relationships and time, hope and despair, laughter and terror. There was really so much to draw on when making the paintings.
“I feel the same sense of engagement watching something like Waiting for Godot as I do when standing in front of a classical painting.”
Nick has since been inspired to paint other actors in theatre productions including Anna Friel as Holly Go-Lightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Jonathon Hyde as Captain Hook in Peter Pan.
Despite spending the majority of his time overseas in the UK and Italy, Nick regularly exhibits in New Zealand and has been a finalist in the New Zealand Portrait Gallery’s biennial Adam Awards for portraiture three times over the last six years.
The artist, who originally moved to London for love and studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, is pleased to be back exhibiting in New Zealand, “It means a lot to me to be able to show my paintings in New Zealand...it is my home.”
The exhibition of Nick’s Waiting for Godot paintings is at the New Zealand Portrait Gallery, Shed 11, Queens Wharf, Wellington from 29 June to about 15 July and entry is free. Nick will gave a lunchtime talk at the gallery on Friday 2 July at 1pm and posters of the paintings are selling at St James Theatre during the Waiting for Godot theatre season.
Nick Cuthell's Biographical Notes:
London based Wellingtonian, Nick Cuthell began his formal art training at the Slade School of Art in London, completing a Foundation course there in 2001. The following year he studied with Peter Cox at the Art Students League of New York, working from life in the traditional atelier system.
After a brief period back in New Zealand teaching at the Inverlochy Art School in Wellington, Cuthell moved to Italy in 2007 to further his studies at the Charles Cecil Studios in Florence.
Figurative work has always been important for Cuthell, with portraiture occupying a central role in his artistic practice. Although he spends the majority of his time overseas, Nick Cuthell has been a regular finalist in the New Zealand Portrait Gallery’s biennial Adam Portraiture Award and subsequent national tours of this Award.
This exhibition features seven oil paintings of the cast for Samuel Beckett’s play “Waiting For Godot”, and one of the director and will be shown here at the New Zealand Portrait Gallery during the Theatre Royal Haymarket Company’s season at the St James Theatre in Wellington. The original 5 portraits in the series: (Sir Ian McKellen as Estragon; Sir Patrick Stewart as Vladimir; Ronald Pickup as Lucky; Simon Callow as Pozzo and George Sear as Boy), were created in the Spring of 2009, when Cuthell was back in London.
He sat in on preview performances and dress rehearsals to get an idea of the production and the actors posed specifically for the portraits, which were presented to them as opening night gifts, then hung in the Royal Circle Bar of the Haymarket. Posters were made of four of the five portraits, and were sold signed by the actors and the artist to raise funds for the Theatre’s Masterclass Programme.
As the production prepared for a second run at the Haymarket at the beginning of 2010, two new paintings of two new cast members were added to the series: Roger Rees as Vladimir and Matthew Kelly as Pozzo, and towards the end of the production’s run in London, Cuthell painted Sean Mathias, the director of “Godot”.
“One of the things that surprised and delighted me so much about Sean Mathias’s production is that it seemed to draw out the humanity which is so clearly there in the play… There was really so much to draw on when making the paintings… The look of the production, with its somber palette and the crumbling proscenium arch I found really beautiful and apt and I tried to include elements of this in the paintings.”
“As a painter who is keenly engaged in portraiture, it was such an interesting experience to paint what is at once both a completely fictional character and also a real flesh and blood human being – an experience that is unique to the theatre – and it inspired a whole new direction in my work”.Nick Cuthell