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Lot Essay
James Lacy was an actor and theatre manager. He made his first appearance with the Norwich company in the season 1723-4. Soon afterwards he moved to London, where he appears to have found employment with John Rich's company at Lincoln's Inn Fields. The date of his stage début in London is uncertain, but on 2 May 1727 he made an appearance as Herodorus in David Lewis's Philip of Macedon.
In May 1742 Lacy took the title role in a Drury Lane performance of Thomas Southerne's Oroonoko. In 1744 he was approached by bankers Amber and Green and entered into an agreement whereby they loaned him the money to buy the theatre patent from Charles Fleetwood. David Garrick, who had himself been offered the patent by Fleetwood, quickly fell out with Lacy.
In the spring of 1747 Lacy made his peace with Garrick, and offered the actor the opportunity to buy a half-share of the business, including patent, theatre lease, properties, and costumes. The partnership was immediately successful, and by the summer of 1750 the accumulated profits already outweighed the sum of each partner's original investment. Lacy ran the financial side of the business and Garrick managed the actors and supervised all artistic business, an association that continued for the rest of his life.
Despite the financial success of Drury Lane, Lacy's attraction to increasingly outlandish forms of speculation caused him to lose much of his fortune. On 21 January 1774 Lacy died at his home, Turk's House, Isleworth, Middlesex. He was buried in the churchyard of St James's Church, Paddington, on 30 January.
We are grateful to Hugh Belsey for confirming the attribution on first-hand inspection and for dating the present work to the mid-1760s.
In May 1742 Lacy took the title role in a Drury Lane performance of Thomas Southerne's Oroonoko. In 1744 he was approached by bankers Amber and Green and entered into an agreement whereby they loaned him the money to buy the theatre patent from Charles Fleetwood. David Garrick, who had himself been offered the patent by Fleetwood, quickly fell out with Lacy.
In the spring of 1747 Lacy made his peace with Garrick, and offered the actor the opportunity to buy a half-share of the business, including patent, theatre lease, properties, and costumes. The partnership was immediately successful, and by the summer of 1750 the accumulated profits already outweighed the sum of each partner's original investment. Lacy ran the financial side of the business and Garrick managed the actors and supervised all artistic business, an association that continued for the rest of his life.
Despite the financial success of Drury Lane, Lacy's attraction to increasingly outlandish forms of speculation caused him to lose much of his fortune. On 21 January 1774 Lacy died at his home, Turk's House, Isleworth, Middlesex. He was buried in the churchyard of St James's Church, Paddington, on 30 January.
We are grateful to Hugh Belsey for confirming the attribution on first-hand inspection and for dating the present work to the mid-1760s.