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Your support makes all the difference.A passion for Shakespeare plays inspired the painter Philip Sutton, RA, to spend two years depicting the bard and his work. The fruits of his labour of love will be exhibited in London next month.
The exhibition, sponsored by Halifax, will start out at the Royal Academy of Arts and the Globe Theatre and then travel to Leeds' Royal Armouries Museum via Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of Shakespeare, who died 381 years ago yesterday.
Sutton, 69, began work in his studio in Manorbier, near Tenby, in Wales, with Henry V, Elizabethan England, France and the battle of Agincourt. "It has been a great revelation to me that I could translate that particular part of English history into something I could do myself," he said. "It combined the ideas I had many years ago of dressing things up - the theatre of life.
"One thing that struck me about Henry V marching his army through France," said Mr Sutton, explaining the presence of farm animals in his paintings, "was that 15,000 men went through the countryside, but farmers and people round about would have remained undisturbed, even though the action was taking place not far away."
Zoe Wanamaker, whose father, Sam, was responsible for resurrecting the Globe Theatre, summed up Mr Sutton's work: "Joy, energy and colour, I think that's the secret."
Sutton is the latest in a line of English painters inspired by Shakespeare, including William Hogarth, Joshua Reynolds and William Blake.
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