Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth
| Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth | |
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| Artist | John Singer Sargent |
| Year | 1889 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 221.0 cm × 114.5 cm (87.0 in × 45.1 in) |
| Location | Tate |
Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth is an oil painting by John Singer Sargent. Painted in 1889, it depicts actress Ellen Terry in a famous performance of William Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth, wearing a green dress decorated with iridescent beetle wings. The play was produced by Henry Irving at the Lyceum Theatre, London, with Irving also playing Macbeth opposite Terry. Sargent attended the opening night on 29 December 1888 and was inspired to paint Terry's portrait almost immediately.
Terry's spectacular gown was designed by Alice Comyns-Carr and made in crochet by Ada Nettleship, using a soft green wool and blue tinsel yarn from Bohemia to create an effect similar to chain mail. It was embroidered with gold and decorated with 1,000 iridescent wings from the green jewel beetle, Sternocera aequisignata. The dress has a narrow border of Celtic designs worked out in red and white stones, is hemmed on all the edges, and girt with a gold belt. The design was inspired by a dress worn by Lady Randolph Churchill that was also trimmed with green beetle wings. It was designed to "look as much like soft chain armour... and yet have something that would give the appearance of the scales of a serpent".
Terry wrote to her daughter, "I wish you could see my dresses. They are superb, especially the first one: green beetles on it, and such a cloak! The photographs give no idea of it at all, for it is in colour that it is so splendid. The dark red hair is fine. The whole thing is Rossetti—rich stained-glass effects."Oscar Wilde quipped that "Lady Macbeth seems to be an economical housekeeper and evidently patronises local industries for her husband's clothes and servant's liveries, but she takes care to do all her own shopping in Byzantium."
The play was very successful, running for more than six months to packed houses. The costume was reused on many later tours, crossing the Atlantic to visit North America at least twice.
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