05 Oct stencil recovery from adler & sullivan’s garrick theater through images and faithfully recreated canvas fragment

this post briefly touches upon a meticulously recreated adler and sullivan garrick theater (1891) hand-painted stenciled canvas section – mainly through images taken at the time it was discovered and/or recovered when adler and sullivan’s garrick theater (1891) was undergoing demolition. 

during the schiller building’s demolition in 1961, richard nickel, john vinci, and david norris removed sections of the auditorium’s walls to recover stencils painted over long ago. 

under crombie taylor’s supervision, vinci, norris, and gregerson manged to painstakingly recover the stencils by hand either at navy pier, where salvaged ornament from the garrick was being transported daily, or under incandescent light from tiffany lamps scattered around crombie’s house.

when tim samuelson and robert furhoff pinpointed the original color scheme with great accuracy – including the use of sullivan’s overlapping roses, samuleson had a section recreated for use in his sullivan exhibition.

the panel was originally located on a rear wall below the auditorium’s balcony.

canvas fragment courtesy of tim samuelson collection. images courtesy of the ryerson and burnham archive, art institute of chicago. images of the canvas section taken by eric j. nordstrom. richard nickel images were enlarged and edited from his contact sheets, where are permanently housed at the ryerson and burnham archive.