“Invitation Card for the Moray Minstrels” by Fred Walker (1871)

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Invitation Card for the Moray Minstrels

Fred Walker

1871

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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham

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Such pseudo-Greek invitation cards, obliquely alluding to John Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn," seem to have been something of a specialty that Fred Walker designed for his friend A. J. Lewis's "baccanals," the winter evening entertainments by the Moray Minstrels, 150 artistic amateurs.

Poster advertising the Moray Minstrels (January 1865)

Invitation Card for the Moray Minstrels (Winter 1866)

Invitation Card for Mr. Arthur Lewis (January 1867)

Commentary

By the 1871 season of the Moray Minstrels, significant changes had occurred. In 1867, the host, A. J. Lewis, had married Kate Terry, the actress-sister of Ellen Terry, one of the leading ladies of the Victorian stage, and Arthur Sullivan's one-act comic operetta Cox and Box; or, The Long-Lost Brothers, with the libretto by composer F. C. Burnand rather than poet W. S. Gilbert, had gone professional. Sullivan had premiered the piece with the Moray Minstrels at Moray Lodge, Kensington, in January 1866, and had reprised it for various charity benefits the following year. However, in 1869 Sullivan had translated the operetta (consisting of an overture, a finalé, and seven duets) to a professional stage, The Royal Gallery of Illustration on Regent Street, where it ran for 264 performances.

Bibliography

Marks, John George. Life and Letters of Frederick Walker, A. R. A.. London and New York: Macmillan, 1896.

Phillips, Claude. Invitation Card by Walker. Frederick Walker and His Works. London: Seeley & Co., 1905 [re-issue of the 1894 edition], facing page 38.

Reid, Forrest. Illustrators of the Eighteen Sixties: An Illustrated Survey of the Work of 58 British Artists. New York: Dover, 1975. Originally published by Faber and Gwyer in London, 1928, as Illustrators of the Sixties.

Last modified 15 July 2018