Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Gilbert and Sullivan in the Entr'acte

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The late careers of Gilbert and Sullivan in the Entr'acte.[edit]

Original 1
Original 2
Original 3
Reason
I'm doing this as a group because commons:Category:Entr'acte - which I uploaded in a day - has many images of this quality, and it seemed better to do it in small, themed groups than to nominate 20-something images individually. These are lovely drawings, but very rare nowadays as the magazine they're from was pretty much just for London theatricals and those with a strong interest in them. I'm batch-nominating for convenience - I think the quality is similar, so...
Proposed caption
Gilbert and Sullivan created fourteen comic operas, including H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, and The Mikado, many of which are still frequently performed today. However, events around their 1889 collaboration, The Gondoliers, led to an argument and a law suit dividing the two.

With the exception of their first opera, Richard D'Oyly Carte produced every Gilbert and Sullivan opera, and had even built the Savoy Theatre, just for productions of their shows. However, in 1890, W. S. Gilbert discovered that maintenance expenses for the the theatre, including a new £500 carpet for the front lobby of the theatre, were being charged to the partnership instead of borne by Carte. Gilbert had trained and briefly practised as a lawyer, and, knowing this was not appropriate, stormed into D'Oyly Carte's office to put this right.

The confrontation did not go well. Gilbert was furious, and, as reported in a letter from Helen D'Oyly Carte (Richard's wife and business partner), addressed Richard "in a way that I should not have thought you would have used to an offending menial." Things soon degraded, a legal hearing was held, and Arthur Sullivan supported Carte in the hearing, testifying that: there were outstanding legal expenses from a battle Gilbert had with Lillian Russell; and while there were some outstanding expenses, they were small. Gilbert, however, thought Sullivan had been manipulated and asked him to say he was mistaken. Sullivan refused, and, despite both desiring to reconcile, Gilbert felt it was a moral issue, and could not look past it.

Sullivan felt Gilbert was questioning his good faith, and in any event, Sullivan had other reasons to stay in Carte's good graces. Carte had put into motion plans to build a new opera house, Carte's Royal English Opera House to produce Sullivan's Ivanhoe. This was Sullivan's only grand opera, and it had a consecutive run of 155 performances - unheard of for a grand opera - but did not recoup the production expenses, and Carte had no opera ready to replace it. The opera house closed until André Messager's La Basoche was eventually prepared, and this alternated with Ivanhoe, but two operas were not enough to make the company viable: it failed in early 1892.

While Sullivan was busy with grand opera, the Savoy Theatre put on a show by Edward Solomon called The Nautch Girl, which proved reasonably successful. However, in 1891, Jessie Bond and Rutland Barrington, two of the starts of the Savoy and creators of many roles for Gilbert and Sullivan, took a leave of absence from the show, and went on a tour of the provinces, presenting a series of sketches by Barrington which Solomon set to music. Both returned for the end of Nautch Girl's run, but left the company thereafter, and only Barrington would return for the final two Gilbert and Sullivan operas.

Gilbert and Sullivan were finally reunited through the efforts of Tom Chappell, who published the sheet music to their operas. In 1893, they produced their penultimate collaboration, Utopia, Limited. Its large cast and multiple costume changes prevented it from being as successful as their previous operas, but it had a reasonable run, and the public were very glad to finally have Gilbert and Sullivan back together, as Alfred Bryan's cartoon for the Entr'acte expressed. However, after Utopia, it would be some time before they collaborated again, on The Grand Duke, and when that show proved a failure, the two would never collaborate again.

(By the way, the main source I checked with for this is Jane Stedman's W. S. Gilbert: A Classic Victorian and his Theatre, roughly pages 270-280. A few things came from elsewhere, but all those are dealt with in detail in the various articles already on Wikipedia. I don't think we cover the Carpet Quarrel in as much detail as we might, though, so there's probably some new information here.)

Articles this image appears in
Glad to See You Together: Gilbert and Sullivan, Utopia, Limited; Gilbert and Ivanhoe: Ivanhoe (opera), Bond and Barrington On the Road in 1891: Jessie Bond, Rutland Barrington.
Creator
Alfred Bryan
  • Support as nominator Vanished user talk 17:53, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Support all Great collection! -- Mbz1 18:08, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support As a frequent editor on Wikipedia:WikiProject Gilbert and Sullivan, I am pleased that these high-quality images have been made available to Wikipedia. -- Ssilvers 23:08, 12 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment The caption is a small article in itself. Is all that information really necessary? SingCal 18:45, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Ssilvers trimmed it a bit - I'm not sure of the timing of his trims vs. you seeing it. But I always did figure that these captions should be educational, and, you must admit, the three images together provide a good justification for a short description =) Vanished user talk 20:32, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question can you clarify how we should consider these? Are they all separate noms? Is this a candidate for a featured image set of these three images? de Bivort 20:06, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • I thought it might work best as a small featured set. If we wanted to break it up, we could cut the paragraph on Bond and Barrington into its own caption (with the background), then keep the other two together? Vanished user talk 20:39, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • I guess I'd favor making the sets as large as is reasonable. In this case three images. But more broadly, I'd prefer to see all the Entr'acte image in a single FP set - if they had an article home. If we did it that way, the caption would be straightforward too. de Bivort 22:39, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        • Don't know if I can find enough references on the Entr'acte. It seems to mostly get mined for reviews and images, not generally discussed for itself. If I come across something, though, we could combine a bit. Vanished user talk 00:35, 11 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support as a set - I would like to see the caption simplified though. Now it is a bit much and might reduce interest in the articles. de Bivort 19:48, 16 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm open to rewrites, but am, perhaps, a little too close to the subject to pick out what's most interesting to the layman. Any suggestions? Vanished user talk 23:58, 16 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Weak Oppose Hate to say it but personally I don't see anything really special in these. I mean the technical quality is good but since there are 20 or so images which are very similar there is nothing in these examples which shine out to make them worthy of being FP. Sorry! --Fir0002 11:39, 17 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment. As it seems likely this will be promoted even though it hasn't attracted a lot of votes, can I suggest that per the comments of a number of those that have supported that this is in someway promoted as a set. I don't object to one being promoted (or 'the set' promoted as one), in fact I'd probably support if I thought we had 'the best' one, but I can see little point in whacking twenty of these through FPC. (Also that caption is way too long!) --jjron (talk) 10:17, 18 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Witholding support for now. (see below) I've been holding off until I made my mind up about the "featured set" idea, and I do now think it has to be a set. I was keen on a gallery-based article to house them all and elect one image to represent them on WP:FP. However, it may be difficult to avoid an AfD in this format, as gallery pages are discouraged per WP:NOT. An alternative is to use a list format like this, which I quite like. It completely avoids the gallery page stigma and allows a short caption for each image.
    Something like The Entr'acte (illustrations) would do as a page title. I did, having said that, set up Alfred Bryan (Illustrator) for this purpose, but it may be that the single source of the images warrants something more specific.
    Furthermore, it could be that these Featured sets need a new category of FP, or at least the representative thumb on the FP page should just say something like "part of a featured set" and link to the gallery/list page.
    Maybe this needs discussing elsewhere first, and it's possible that a re-nomination might be required once it was all set up. Either way, it all seems a bit premature to promote this and then scurry off and find a home for them. Note that there's an upcoming FPC which could probably do with its own volcanic eruptions page, so this isn't quite the ad hoc proposal it might seem. --mikaultalk 10:12, 19 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • I don't know: grouping them all as a set in that way seems to ignore that they have vastly different content - One's cricket, one's a political cartoon, others are on G&S, etc. in favour of lumping by artist. Is the artist really the most notable thing about these? I mean, if this was a complete set of the drawings from the Entr'acte annuals for years 18XX-18YY, sure, but this is, in fact, a selection. Vanished user talk 15:28, 19 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • The Entr'acte is the most notable connection between them. AFAIK there's little more than a stub's worth of info available on it, but we know enough about the context of each image to fill in the details. Why is "a selection" a bad thing, especially if it's a "best of"?--mikaultalk 18:47, 19 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        • Nothing wrong with a selection, but my entry criteria were very subjective: If I particularly liked it, or if I knew incidents or people were important to Victorian theatre, I chose it. Since this was one day's rifling through of the limited number of volumes available, it's quite possible that I missed things that should've been included due simply to lack of knowledge.
        • In other words, I'm a little uncomfortable being considered the arbiter of the best of the Entr'acte. Vanished user talk 22:20, 19 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
          • I wouldn't worry too much about that. NASA is regularly farmed for what are – in someones opinion – FP candidate images. Oddly enough I was just wondering about compiling a list, like the Oz books one, of Hubble images, the page being amended (entries promoted/delisted) as & when via the FPC page. Maybe I'm missing something; it might prove a little more complicated than people are prepared to tolerate, for example. In any event there's nothing wrong with being selective! FWIW you seem to me to have pretty good taste :) --mikaultalk 23:00, 19 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
            • This is really rather a tricky one. I'm not against it in principle, but sets are such a rare thing already that I don't even know how they work on the Main Page. Vanished user talk 07:13, 20 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Umm, what should I promote here? All three images? Or just one, in which case please specify the image to be promoted. MER-C 12:20, 20 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that depends.. can you think of a way of promoting a featured set? It seems a popular enough idea but I don't believe there's a precedent for it. Then there's those upcoming volcano images.. Personally, I favour the featured set idea but suggest we select a 'key' image to represent all howevermany others on some yet-to-be-created page. If you promote all three, there are a dozen more of similar quality which deserve the same recognition, is all. --mikaultalk 14:02, 20 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think all three can be promoted separately (honestly, for a nom that's received the bare minimum of support to be promoted, could that possibly be justified?). In my opinion one gets promoted as representative of the set as Mick suggests; the caption on the image page can be changed to link to the others and point out it was promoted as representative of the featured set or something like that (perhaps Adam could do that as he probably knows most about it). Which one? I'd say Original 3 which shows Gilbert and Sullivan and looks to be the most interesting. --jjron (talk) 15:01, 20 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If I might suggest: Why don't we put these on hold for now, go through the other Entr'acte pictures, then when we're done, we can discuss what to do. Vanished user talk 11:39, 24 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep on hold, or (better) withdraw and renominate once there's a proper home for them. As I said earlier, a list-formatted Entr'acte article would do, either for a featured set or to promote one or two of the very best examples from, or else they belong in disparate parts of the encyclopedia and the "set" idea is harder to gel. In any event, if a set is favoured, we'd better decide what a featured set is before that volcano nom comes along. --mikaultalk 15:09, 26 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You know, this is turning out to be such a headache, and all because I wanted to share some neat stuff I found. Tell you what. Settle what to do among yourselves, then let me know. Vanished user talk 15:42, 26 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm willing to vote oppose if it will help move this along pending a renomination once all the issues are sorted out. It should really have been sorted before the nomination. I hate these things that sit unresolved at the bottom of the page for weeks and months getting nowhere. --jjron 08:39, 3 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    I thought they had been. Then people started making new suggestions for how to divide them up, and, frankly, turned this into such a headache that I find it impossible to know how to move on. So, unless someone makes a specific proposal for what to do with them, there's not a chance I'm going through this pointlessness again with a renom. But I would still be rather annoyed to have my research work rejected because noone could be bothered to decide how to deal with it. Vanished user talk 07:33, 7 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I like it. Support -- Anonymous DissidentTalk 06:35, 7 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose -- I haven't seen any argument that these are of Featured Picture quality. Sure they're rare, and they are an interesting glimpse into a bygone era, but compared with other contemporaneous drawings, they are not top-drawer. Oscar (talk) 18:27, 8 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • They illustrate subjects not very well illustrated elsewhere. Vanished user talk 06:40, 10 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. I guess I'm butting in here, as I didn't participate in the original discussion, but could we close this nom with no consensus and renominate on an individual basis, clearly detailing the enc. relevance? For example, there is one that I believe, although a caricature, applies excellently to G. and S. reconciliating. Several others could apply to different actors (caricatures, after all, have their enc. and importance too) and maybe certain plays (or is it operas?). I never warmed to the idea of a featured set, esp. one of 20 images, as it implies a certain specialness that I'm not sure is there. From the looks of it, it doesn't really seem feasible either (at least not in this case). And as it turns out, this inert languishing here on FPC is more hassle than necessary IMO.--Malachirality (talk) 05:55, 11 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Original 3 I guess the best way out of this is to forget featured sets for now. As Adam pointed out, the only thing they have in common – the Entr'acte – is too obscure to base even a stub on, so they (technically) have no enc value as a set. They do have individual enc value and the third one here is a really good, slick illustration depicting a unique event (noticeably better than the first one, I think) and is representative of the quality of the others. Assuming earlier supporters agree (and waverers like me finally make their minds up ;o)) I think there may be consensus enough to promote this one. --mikaultalk 09:14, 11 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Promoted Image:Glad to See You Together.png MER-C 02:19, 13 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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