Robert Wilson

Robert Wilson is a highly acclaimed American artist, theatre producer and playwright. Across his diverse career Wilson has been consistently influenced by theatre, art history, and culture, all of which are prominent elements in his video portraits. Wilson’s video portraits place well known figures of today within art historical or dramatic contexts and draw upon the biography and personal life of the ‘sitter’. Such as with Wilson’s portrait of Jeanne Moreau (1947-2015) as Mary, Queen of Scots. Moreau was a prominent actress of mixed French and English heritage, whose career in French cinema and theatre spanned over sixty years. When Wilson approached Moreau about creating a video portrait she was researching a theatre project based on Mary, Queen of Scots, which became the basis of her portrait.

In Wilson’s 2005 portrait, Moreau inhabits Mary’s space, yet the historic figure of Mary looms large within the image. The seventeenth century portrait of Mary Stuart (1542-1587), better known as the Queen of Scots, was created by an unknown artist c. 1610 and was a based on an even earlier portrait from 1587 by Nicholas Hilliard, a leading English portrait painter of the late sixteenth century, which showed her after ten years of imprisonment in England. She had fled Scotland following her deposition which had placed her young son, James VI, on the throne and had sought sanctuary in England. Her presence in England was a long running political issue as she became the focus of plots and conspiracies against her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I. Paintings of Mary were highly popular in the early seventeenth century as a means to show loyalty to the Stuart monarchs of England following the accession of James VI of Scotland to the English throne.

Moreau is regal and defiant, reflecting Mary’s unwavering belief that she was Scotland’s true monarch. While her stance is strong, the room which surrounds her is plain and dark referring to her existence as a prisoner. The main decorative features in the portrait are the crucifix and rosary, symbolising her deep adherence to the Catholic faith at a time of religious upheaval, and the stark white lace of her cuffs and ruff. The dominance of black and white were significant in Mary’s portrait as black indicated authority and piety, whereas white signified virtue. She is at once commanding of our gaze by her unique nature, and yet also a captive to the the role in which she has been cast, a constant tension experienced by an actress on the stage, or by an imprisoned sixteenth century Queen. Jeanne Moreau was known in her acting career for portraying women who did not submit to their circumstances, and in this portrait we see her share that characteristic with Mary, a Queen who never submitted to impositions of her imprisonment.