Nude with Violin

It is set in Paris in 1956 and portrays the effect on the family and associates of a famous artist when it is revealed after his death that he painted none of the pictures signed by him and sold for large sums.

His 1945 revue Sigh No More had run for only 213 performances in the West End, and the failure of his musical Pacific 1860 in 1946–47 was in contrast to the success of the show that followed it at Drury Lane, Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!, which ran for more than ten times as long.

[20] Sebastien pours champagne and proposes a toast to his former employer – "a man who ... contrived to enjoy life to the full, and at the same time remain a hero to his own valet".

[22] Jane insists to her family that, since Sorodin died intestate and Isobel will inherit his large fortune, it is only right to make provision for the faithful Sebastien.

Sebastien tells them that in the bank, along with the original of the letter, there is the key to a studio in a Parisian suburb in which there is one final "Sorodin" masterpiece, "Nude with Violin".

Although she has promised, and been handsomely paid, not to reveal the secret, she attempts to blackmail the family by threatening to publish Sorodin's letter to her in which he acknowledges the fraud and offers her hush-money.

[27] Jane is distressed to learn that her father was a fake, but Sebastien assures her that Sorodin was an idealist with "a fanatical, burning hatred of dishonesty", a crusader who loved good art and loathed "the cant, intellectual snobbism and commercialising of creative talent".

When Jacob returns he reports that Obadiah is not bribable: he is a Seventh Day Adventist and has religious scruples about his deception, feeling that, to save Sorodin's soul, he must publish the truth.

[30] Cherry-May returns; Jacob agrees to provide the funds for her boyfriend's chicken farm and dispatches her to Biarritz to retrieve the original document.

When all the visitors have left, Sebastien sends the frantic Jacob home to bed, telephones his underworld friend and asks him to come round: "No knives or firearms necessary, but you might slip a cosh in your pocket in case of unforeseen developments".

[33] The appalling quality of "Nude with Violin" makes Jane suspect that Sebastien painted it – initiating a fourth period in Sorodin's fictitious output, "Neo-infantilism".

It emerges that the painter was Sebastien's son, the young Lauderdale, and that there are more of his paintings in storage, all signed by Sorodin, which he can sell to collectors at a vast profit.

[37] In Coward's centenary year, 1999, the play was mounted at the Royal Exchange, Manchester, starring Derek Griffiths as Sebastien, Marcia Warren as Isobel, Tamzin Malleson as Jane, and Nick Caldecott as Clinton; Marianne Elliott directed.

[38] In 2017 Lesya Ukrainka National Academic Theater in Kyiv staged the play in Ukrainian, in a translation by O. Atlas and A. Vasilieva, directed by Leonid Ostropolsky.

[40] The Observer's reviewer, Kenneth Tynan, said that the play "recalls those triumphant Letters to the Editor which end: 'What has this so-called "Picasso" got that my six-year-old daughter hasn't?

'"[41] He continued: The Times liked the idea of a celebrated painter who turns out never to have painted anything, but found it "apparently incapable of developments ... Mr Coward can only proceed to play variations on it.

Darlington concluded that the climax, at the end of the first act, when the imposture is revealed, leaves the playwright with nothing to portray but other people's reactions to it, "And, somehow, that doesn't make an exciting story".

[44] Reviewing the 1999 revival, Jeffrey Wainwright wrote in The Independent, "As a satire on modern art the play is laboured and unoriginal, but its real subject is the relationship between the valet and his absent hero."

Like the critics in The Times and Telegraph he found that the narrative flagged in later scenes: "Having created his situation, Coward appears to have been content with the repetitious sport provided by the sequential arrival of the true 'artists'".