Maugham Collection of Theatrical Paintings

Gift of Maugham Collection to Holburne Museum and Theatre Royal Bath

In early 2011 the Somerset Maugham Collection was transferred to Bath, where it is now shared between the Holburne Museum and the Theatre Royal. Alexander Sturgis, Director of the Holburne Museum commented, “Bath could not provide a better home for the Maugham pictures. We are an eighteenth- century city and a theatrical city and the renewed Holburne and refurbished Theatre Royal will provide the perfect surroundings. The happy division of the works between the Holburne and the Theatre will keep the collection within a short walk of each other and ensure that the whole collection will be on public display for the first time in over twenty five years.” Although a number of the paintings were displayed during the 1980s at the National, the NT had neither the space nor the ability to be able securely and safely to display the collection as a whole. A selection of the paintings was subsequently loaned to the now closed V&A Theatre Museum in Covent Garden; we are delighted that now, after years of having no suitable home, the collection has been transferred to Bath, where it will be shared between the Holburne Museum and the Theatre Royal. The National has retained the collection of Maugham's manuscripts which were part of the original gift.

Somerset Maugham and the National Theatre

William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) was a distinguished British playwright and author; though he first trained as a doctor. His first novel Liza of Lambeth was published in 1897 and his first play, A Man of Honour was performed in 1903. He was famous before the First World War for his popular light comedies. Indeed, he was so popular that at one period, in 1908, he had four plays running simultaneously in London. After the war his work began to focus more on social issues and on more serious aspects of relationships, in plays such as The Circle and The Constant Wife. In 1928 he bought his home on Cap Ferat in the South of France. He gave up writing plays, following poor public reaction, in 1933 having written 27 full-length plays. His autobiographical work The Summing Up was published in 1938 and The Writer's Notebook in 1949. He was made a Companion of Honour in 1954.

Maugham's plays have continued to be revived. The National has put on two productions of his work: Home and Beauty at the Old Vic, 1968, and For Services Rendered, Lyttelton, 1979.
The Circle was chosen as one of the 100 plays charting the progress of drama in the twentieth century in NT 2000.

The Collection
Maugham began collecting theatrical paintings before the First World War with a work by De Wilde showing two actors in Sylvester Daggerwood. He continued to build up his collection through purchases at auction and through growing contacts with dealers; prices for this genre, for the most part, remained low.

"My collection was second only to that of the Garrick Club, and I had spent so many years making it that I was grieved to think that it would be dispersed at my death in Christie's auction rooms... When at last the long efforts of a number of enthusiastic persons, striving indefatigably year after year to overcome the indifference of governments and the apathy of the public, seemed likely to be crowned with success and a national theatre would be built, it struck me that by presenting my pictures to it I might achieve the object of keeping them together." (Somerset Maugham, 1954 from The Artist and the Theatre, Mander and Mitchenson, 1955).

Somerset Maugham first announced that he was to make a gift of his collection of theatrical paintings to the Trustees of the National Theatre in 1948. In 1951 the oil paintings were taken down from the walls of his villa in the south of France and sent to London, where they were exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum. The watercolours were returned to London following Maugham's death in 1965. In 1981 an official opening announced a display of the collection in the public areas of the National. Unfortunately, due to worries concerning the safety of the paintings, the display had to be discontinued. From 1994 to 2007 the collection was on loan to the Theatre Museum in Covent Garden, on the closure of the museum the National took possession of the collection again and in 2011 passed ownership to the Holburne Museum and Theatre Royal Bath where the collection is once again available to the public.

Images of paintings from the Maugham Collection of Shakespearean characters can be found by clicking on the link to Shakespeare Paintings.

For more detail about the collection see the following publications, both are available to consult in the Archive:
Raymond Mander and Joe Mitchenson, The Artist and the Theatre, William Heinemann Ltd, 1955 and Raymond Mander and Joe Mitchenson, Guide to the Maugham Collection of Theatrical Paintings, Heinemann and the National Theatre, 1980.