Created by Ellen McDermot on Mon, 06/14/2021 - 10:42
Description:
The Lady Macbeth costume featured here was designed by Alice Laura Comyns-Carr (1850-1927) and made by Adaline Cort Nettleship (1856-1932). While Carr is more closely aligned to aestheticism, the dress shows how the two fields drew inspiration from each other - the dress being made for the ‘pre-Raphaelite actress’ Terry, by aesthete Carr, would then feature in the pre-Raphaelite art of Sargent in ‘Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth’.
The Pre-Raphaelites drew heavily on both natural and medieval imagery. Designed to invoke fear, the dress is made of thousands of beetle wings to make Terry look like a serpent with iridescent scales that shimmered as she moved across the stage of the Lyceum Theatre in London in 1888. The construction of the dress with its large open sleeves and crocheted bodice overlaid with the beetle-wing casings combine to convey the appearance of a ‘soft chain armour’ suggestive of medieval dress.