Somerset Maugham and his collection
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 bequeath 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.
Images of paintings from the Maugham Collection of Shakespearean characters can be found by clicking on the link to Shakespeare Paintings. The collection is currently unavailable to the public while the National seeks new exhibition facilities.
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.
