Minnie Cunningham (1870–1954) was a British music hall star and actress whose career spanned nearly forty years. Today she is primarily remembered through paintings made of her by the prominent British artist Walter Sickert (1860–1942) in the early 1890s. Despite her popularity, Cunningham has mostly been overlooked in music hall and theatre histories. Instead, the limited information that is available about her today comes to us primarily through art-history scholarship on Sickert. To fill this gap, this paper offers the first scholarly account of Cunningham by drawing together press notices, published interviews, and other artefacts from her long career. This introduction to Cunningham is framed by a discussion of the unevenness of the cultural transactions taking place between these artists – between the ‘higher’ arts practice of modern painting and the perceived ‘lower’ music hall. I consider how this imbalance played out at the time these artists worked and the impact this has had in the preservation (or lack thereof) of their artistic practices.

中文翻译：

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米妮坎宁安在老贝德福德

Minnie Cunningham (1870–1954) 是英国音乐厅的明星和女演员，其职业生涯跨越了近四十年。今天，人们主要通过著名的英国艺术家沃尔特·西克特（Walter Sickert，1860-1942 年）在 1890 年代初期为她创作的画作来纪念她。尽管她很受欢迎，但坎宁安在音乐厅和剧院的历史中大多被忽视了。相反，今天关于她的有限信息主要是通过关于 Sickert 的艺术史奖学金获得的。为了填补这一空白，本文通过汇集新闻公告、已发表的采访和她长期职业生涯中的其他人工制品，提供了对坎宁安的第一个学术描述。对坎宁安的介绍是围绕这些艺术家之间发生的文化交易的不平衡性进行的讨论——在现代绘画的“高级”艺术实践和被认为的“低级”音乐厅之间。我考虑了这些艺术家工作时这种不平衡是如何产生的，以及这对他们的艺术实践的保存（或缺乏）产生的影响。