Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/File:Ira Aldridge as Aaron in Titus Andronicus.jpg

Ira Aldridge in Titus Andronicus[edit]

Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes. Voting period ends on 18 Jul 2010 at 13:31:25 (UTC)

Reason: Illustrates both a very notable African-American actor, and one of Shakespeare's plays which is very hard to find high-quality illustrations for. I actually had to contact the LoC, and beg them to release the files to get this one, hence why I've done it immediately. =)
Articles in which this image appears: Ira Aldridge, Titus Andronicus
FP category for this image: Either Wikipedia:Featured_pictures/Culture,_entertainment,_and_lifestyle/Theatre or Wikipedia:Featured pictures/People/Entertainment. Probably the latter: It's slightly more important in Ira Aldridge.
Creator: From a daguerreotype by Paine of Islington. Printed by The London Printing and Publishing Company.

Support as nominator --Adam Cuerden (talk) 13:31, 9 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Info If you're wondering about the crop, it's because there's a little bit of text shoved right down at the bottom of the page, and I needed to put enough space on the other sides to balance. File:Ira_Aldridge_as_Aaron_in_Titus_Andronicus - detail.jpg crops this text, but I think you'll agree that it had to stay in in at least one copy. Adam Cuerden (talk) 13:31, 9 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support, very nice. Love the costume. Agreed the EV is higher in the actor's article. J Milburn (talk) 09:12, 10 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support High technical standard (TS,) with high EV. Gut Monk (talk) 01:11, 11 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support for quality, but I need to catch up on my Shakespeare, and Ira seems to be an interesting person, a black man becoming a famous actor decades before the USA even thought about freeing its slaves. --I′d※<3※Ɵɲɛ (talk) 01:35, 11 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- Titus Andronicus is basically a revenge tragedy. It contains rape, cannibalism, murder, and... ya name it, it's probably in there. Ira Aldridge was really an incredible person: He started his career in America; when he had gone as high as he could in America, he left for Britain, to have more opportunity - and was so good that he's one of only 33 actors memorialized in the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Shakespeare's birthplace of Stratford-upon-Avon. Long before the idea of race-blind casting, he played Hamlet, Romeo, Richard III, and (of course) Othello, all to rave reviews. He also had two interracial marriages (his first wife predeceased him), which really annoyed the pro-slavery contingent (though that he did marry interracially was probably mainly for reasons of propiniquity: Victorian Shakespearian actors in Britain were probably unlikely to even meet very many people who weren't white. Still, I'm kind of proud of his wives for ignoring the prevalent racism, which, while largely of a passive sort due to ignorance (racism due to not knowing the other group is much easier to get people to drop, as opposed to active racism, as in the American South of the time), it was still very common.) Adam Cuerden (talk) 05:04, 11 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Fantastic job on the restoration, and equally fantastic EV. Amphy (talk) 06:38, 12 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. — raeky ^{(talk | edits)} 00:21, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Promoted File:Ira Aldridge as Aaron in Titus Andronicus.jpg --I′d※<3※Ɵɲɛ (talk) 16:30, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]