Sir William Rothenstein

The Doll’s House


Not on display

Sir William Rothenstein 1872–1945
Oil paint on canvas
Support: 889 × 610 mm
frame: 1092 × 819 × 74 mm
Presented by C.L. Rutherston 1917



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 painting 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 The Doll's House and John on landscape drawings (Augustus John: A Biography, I, London 1974, p.92).

The painting's title refers to Ibsen's 1879 play A Doll's House, which had its first London performance in 1889. Rothenstein recalls in Men and Memories, '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.

Augustus John amusingly parodied the subject as if it were a typical Victorian painting that referred to him and to Alice as people and not as characters in the play:

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 romanticism and his penchant for the dramatic.
(William Rothenstein Memorial Exhibition, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1950, p.5)
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).

The painting was presented to the Tate Gallery by the artist's brother Charles Rutherston in 1924.

Further reading:
William Rothenstein, Men and Memories, I, London 1931, pp.56, 210, 349, 367, reproduced facing p.346
Robert Speaight, William Rothenstein: The Portrait of an Artist in his Time, London 1962, pp.133-4, 145, 325, reproduced facing p.49

Terry Riggs
January 1998


Display caption

John Rothenstein’s wife, the actress Alice Kingsley, posed for this picture with the artist Augustus John. It was inspired by Ibsen’s play The Doll’s House, about Nora, a women in a disintegrating marriage. Rothenstein represented Christine Linde and Nils Krogstad in Act III, just before Krogstad’s letter exposes Nora’s deception of her husband. Rothenstein did not depict a specific scene, but captured the atmosphere of secrets before the dénouement, and the tension between Krogstad and Mrs Linde, who were once in love with each other.

Gallery label, December 2016


Catalogue entry

N03189 THE DOLL'S HOUSE 1899

Not inscribed.
Canvas, 35×24 (89×61).
Presented by Charles L. Rutherston 1917.
Coll: Purchased from the artist by his brother C. L. Rutherston 1900.
Exh: 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); Twenty Years of British Art, Whitechapel Art Gallery, May–June 1910 (532); Bradford, June 1910 (15); Tate Gallery, May–June 1950 (17).
Lit: Frank Rutter, Some Contemporary Artists, 1922, pp.88–9; Wellington, 1923, pp.24–5, repr. pl.3; Men and Memories, 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.
Repr: Tate Gallery Illustrations, British School, 1938, p.93; Picture Post, 11 March 1939 (in colour); John Rothenstein, The Tate Gallery, 1962, p.251.

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 Men and Memories, 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 The Doll's House when Mrs Linden and Krogstad are listening for the end of the dance upstairs.

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