ifficult for painters to know how to make the faces of the characters so that they are expressing perfectly what Shakespeare wrote, and the most difficult character was Macbeth, since most actors hit him off and created faces. That was all the painters had: the expression of the actors, and Mrs. Pritchard was a sweet woman, very calm, so it was difficult for her to show horror, and the final result, the painting would be the way Mrs. Pritchard made Lady Macbeth be. (Emory) Another painter who was known by his Shakespearean paintings is the watercolorist Richard Parkes Bonington (1802-1828). He was known by his “impressive body of paintings” and books were written about him by university professors. Bonington painted various scenes of Henry VIII. John Pettie, another name known by its Shakespearean influence, painted “many periods but he was especially noted for recreated incidents from the English Civil War and the Jacobite Rebellion.” In the painting that one source defines as Romeo and Juliet one incident occurs. An error in “Act IV, scene I, after Paris leaves the Friar and Juliet. Both Romeo and Juliet are with Friar Laurence”, but only Juliet appears in the painting. “ In the 1840’s, artists were for some reason as devoted to the scene in which Friar gives Juliet the potion as they had been in the immediate preceding years to Juliet and the Nurse.” (Emory)Shakespeare used imagery throughout all his plays (Dean 23) and that was probably a great value tool for painters to paint his plays.The Art Journal of 1889 said that for a painter ”to paint a picture is usually a dangerous proceeding, so far as a successful result is concerned; still more is it when the subject is not of his own selection.” And William Ernest Henley (1849-1903), a painter, “ not only avoided criticism upon his illustrations, but does not give us a hint as to what scene each aims at illustra...
