Joseph Allen Physioc

Physioc, Joseph A[llen] (1865–1951), designer. Born in Richmond, Virginia, and raised in Columbia, South Carolina, he began his career as a set designer in small theatres in Alabama, later moving to New York and taking a job as an assistant scene painter at the Metropolitan Opera. He also briefly tried his skills at acting. In 1894 he joined with Henry E. Hoyt to design the sets for De Koven's comic opera Rob Roy. Among Physioc's many later successes were Mansfield's Richard III (1896), Courted into Court (1896), Beau Brummell (1900), The Climbers (1901), The Lion and the Mouse (1905), The Traveling Salesman (1908), Within the Law (1912), Peg o' My Heart (1912), Lightnin' (1918), Seventh Heaven (1922), and Dracula (1927). A formal, carefully detailed painter of the old school, he found himself at odds with the more stylized set designs that began to come into vogue shortly before World War I. Rather than adapt, he retired and spent his last years painting pictures for exhibitions.