ABSTRACT
Towards the end of the nineteenth century there was a vogue for reproducing famous paintings on the theatre stage as tableaux vivants with live persons posed within a frame against a painted background. Hanfstaengl, the well-known Munich art publisher, attempted in a series of actions to restrain this alleged infringement of copyright in the paintings, but without success. The plaintiff had some limited success with regard to the painted backgrounds of two tableaux but lost his case with regard to the posed figures. Lord Justice Lindley, in the Court of Appeal, regarded the plaintiff's contention as a construction of the Fine Arts Copyright Act 1862 (the relevant statute at the time) which was never dreamed of when it was passed, Hanfstaengl v. Empire Palace, 1894. A further twist came when the House of Lords rejected Hanfstaengl's claim that sketches of the tableaux vivants published in the Daily Graphic infringed copyright in the original pictures: the sketches could not be said to be copies of the original pictures, Hanfstaengl v. Baines, 1895.