Henry Irving as Mephistopheles, c.1885
This sepia cabinet card photograph of a painting shows actor Sir Henry Irving as Mephistopheles in ‘Faust’. The photograph was produced by the Stereoscopic Company, London, and the original artwork was by Sir John Bernard Partridge, whose signature can be seen in the bottom left-hand corner.
John Bernard Partridge (1861-1915) was a painter and illustrator who became the principal cartoonist of Punch magazine. He acted at the Lyceum Theatre in his youth, using the name Bernard Gould, and made many drawings of Irving, some of which appeared in the theatre’s souvenir programmes.
