Oil paint on canvas
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/sir-william-rothenstein-1874" aria-label="More by Sir William Rothenstein" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Sir William Rothenstein</a>
Dolls House
Presented by C.L. Rutherston 1917
adults
architecture
domestic
emotions and human qualities
emotions, concepts and ideas
features
hallway
Ibsen, Henrik, ‘A doll’s house’, 1879
individuals: female
individuals: male
interiors
John, Augustus
Kingsley, Alice
Knewstub, Alice
literature (not Shakespeare)
literature and fiction
man
named individuals
natural phenomena
people
portraits
shadow
stair / step
suffering
woman
<p>The title of this painting refers to Henrik Ibsen’s 1879 play, <span>The Doll’s House</span>. It tells the story of a disintegrating marriage. Ibsen’s realistic prose influenced many painters. Here, Rothenstein is inspired by a tense scene where a character’s infidelity is uncovered. The artist doesn’t illustrate the play. Instead, the painting finds an equivalent for Ibsen’s use of silence and stillness to create dramatic tension. Rothenstein used his wife, actor Alice Kingsley and his friend, artist Augustus John as the models.</p><p><em>Gallery label, October 2020</em></p>
painting oil paint canvas
14 April 2003 – 4 May 2004
2004-05-04
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2003-04-14
Private Lives
Collection based display
16 December 2006 – 18 November 2007
2007-11-18
16 December 2006 – 18 November 2007
2007-11-18
2006-12-16
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2006-12-16
Intimate Interiors
Collection based display
14 December 2012 – 26 September 2022
2022-09-26
10 December 2012 – 25 September 2022
2022-09-25
2012-12-10
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2012-12-14
Gallery 4
Collection based display
The Doll’s House
support: 889 × 610 mm
frame: 1092 × 819 × 74 mm
Presented by C.L. Rutherston 1917
<em>The Doll's House</em> was painted at Vattetot, near Etretat in Normandy, where
Rothenstein stayed between June and October 1899. After apparently being shown in London that year, it was, according to Rothenstein's notebook for 1900, finished at Kensington in January 1900. It won a silver medal at the 1900 Paris Exhibition.<p>The
artist Augustus John and Rothenstein's wife Alice Knewstub (the actress Alice Kingsley) posed for the picture. After their marriage in 1899, the Rothensteins honeymooned in Vattetot, where they rented a cottage. They were shortly joined there by
Charles Conder, William Orpen, John, and Rothenstein's younger brother Albert, who stayed at the local inn. The <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/painting" title="Glossary definition for 'Painting'"><span>painting</span></a> was posed on the staircase of the couple's cottage. John is wearing a coat and a pair of corduroy peg-top trousers which were made
for him at the nearby fishing town of Yport, by a tailor who made suits for sailors. John's biographer, Michael Holroyd, writes that every morning the group rose at half past seven, drank a cup of chocolate and worked until eleven ( Rothenstein on
<em>The Doll's House</em> and John on <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/l/landscape" title="Glossary definition for 'Landscape'"><span>landscape</span></a> <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/d/drawing" title="Glossary definition for 'Drawing'"><span>drawings</span></a> (<em>Augustus John: A Biography</em>, I, London 1974, p.92).</p><p>The painting's title refers to Ibsen's 1879 play <em>A Doll's House</em>, which had its first London performance in 1889.
Rothenstein recalls in <em>Men and Memories</em>, 'We were all mesmerised by Ibsen in those days' (Rothenstein, I, p.210). He got to know of  Ibsen's work through Conder, and he was later introduced by George Bernard Shaw to the actress Janet
Achurch, whose performance as Nora he admired. The painting depicts the climax of the drama in Act III, during a dance at the Helmers' house, with John as Krogstad and Alice as Mrs Linde. The latter, a widowed friend of Nora's, has called Krogstad to
the house to retrieve a letter he wrote exposing Nora, which will be found by Helmer at the end of the dance. As the two, who had been in love many years before, listen for the dance to end, Mrs Linde struggles with the decision to expose Nora's
deception and the hypocrisy of the Helmers' marriage.</p><p>Augustus John amusingly parodied the subject as if it were a typical <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/v/victorian" title="Glossary definition for 'Victorian'"><span>Victorian</span></a> painting that referred to him and to Alice as people and not as characters in the play:</p><blockquote>	This is a regular
problem picture. I am portrayed standing at the foot of a 	staircase upon which Alice has unaccountably seated herself. I appear to be 	ready for the road, for I am carrying a mackintosh on my arm and am shod and 	hatted. But Alice seems to hesitate.
Can she have changed her mind at the last 	moment? But what could have been her intention? Perhaps the weather had 	changed for the worse and made a promenade inadvisable: but we shall never 	know. The picture will remain a perpetual enigma, to disturb,
fascinate or 	repel ... [it points to] Rothenstein's essential <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/r/romanticism" title="Glossary definition for 'Romanticism'"><span>romanticism</span></a> and his <em>penchant</em> for 	the dramatic.<br/>				(<em>William Rothenstein Memorial Exhibition</em>, exhibition 				catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1950, p.5)</blockquote>To
Rothenstein's biographer Robert Speaight, the painting 'suggests an anecdote and conceals a mystery ... It was a strange picture to have come out of a honeymoon summer ... this man and this woman, though they are so nearly touching, are each alone in
the prison of their own thoughts' (Speaight, p.134).<p>The painting was presented to the Tate Gallery by the artist's brother Charles Rutherston in 1924.</p><p><strong>Further reading:</strong><br/>William Rothenstein, <em>Men and Memories</em>, I, London
1931, pp.56, 210, 349, 367, reproduced facing p.346<br/>Robert Speaight, <em>William Rothenstein: The Portrait of an Artist in his Time</em>, London 1962, pp.133-4, 145, 325, reproduced facing p.49</p><p>Terry Riggs<br/>January 1998<!-- end text --></p>
Summary
2005-09-15T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
<div class="text">
<p>The title of this painting refers to Henrik Ibsen’s 1879 play, <i>The Doll’s House</i>. It tells the story of a disintegrating marriage. Ibsen’s realistic prose influenced many painters. Here, Rothenstein is inspired by a tense scene where a character’s infidelity is uncovered. The artist doesn’t illustrate the play. Instead, the painting finds an equivalent for Ibsen’s use of silence and stillness to create dramatic tension. Rothenstein used his wife, actor Alice Kingsley and his friend, artist Augustus John as the models.</p>
</div>

Display caption
2020-10-13T00:00:00
display-caption
DISPLAY_CAPTION
<p><b>N03189</b> THE DOLL'S HOUSE 1899</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Not inscribed.
<br/>Canvas, 35×24 (89×61).
<br/>Presented by Charles L. Rutherston 1917.
<br/><i>Coll:</i> Purchased from the artist by his brother C. L. Rutherston 1900.
<br/><i>Exh:</i> In London, 1899 (no record); International Exhibition, Paris, 1900 (British Pavilion, 225); International Exhibition, Glasgow, 1901 (Fine Art, 432); Galerie Eduard Schutte, Berlin, January 1902 (3); N.E.A.C., April–May 1903 (57); <i>Twenty Years of British Art</i>, Whitechapel Art Gallery, May–June 1910 (532); Bradford, June 1910 (15); Tate Gallery, May–June 1950 (17).
<br/><i>Lit:</i> Frank Rutter, <i>Some Contemporary Artists</i>, 1922, pp.88–9; Wellington, 1923, pp.24–5, repr. pl.3; <i>Men and Memories</i>, I, 1931, pp.349, 367, repr. facing p.346; Augustus John in exh. cat., Tate Gallery, May–June 1950, p.6; Speaight, 1962, pp.133–4, repr. p.49.
<br/><i>Repr:</i> <i>Tate Gallery Illustrations, British School</i>, 1938, p.93; <i>Picture Post</i>, 11 March 1939 (in colour); John Rothenstein, <i>The Tate Gallery</i>, 1962, p.251.</p>
<p>Augustus John and the artist's wife posed for the picture; it was painted at Vattetot in the summer of 1899 where the artist spent his honeymoon after his marriage to Alice Knewstub. In <i>Men and Memories</i>, I, p.56, he records that he first heard of Ibsen from Conder in Paris and later (p.210) states: ‘We were all mesmerised by Ibsen in those days’. The picture expresses the tension of Act III of <i>The Doll's House</i> when Mrs Linden and Krogstad are listening for the end of the dance upstairs.</p>
<p><b>Published in:</b>
<br/>Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, <i>The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture</i>, London 1964, II
<br/>
<br/></p>

Catalogue entry
2004-07-16T00:00:00
catalogue-entry
CATALOGUE_ENTRY
adults architecture domestic emotions and human qualities emotions, concepts and ideas features hallway Ibsen, Henrik, ‘A doll’s house’, 1879 individuals: female individuals: male interiors John, Augustus Kingsley, Alice Knewstub, Alice literature and fiction literature (not Shakespeare) man named individuals natural phenomena people portraits shadow stair / step suffering woman