Public image limited …
In the 18th century, as now, actor portraits were a careful exercise in public image. What was different, however, was that the women who played comic country girls and tragic muses in London’s theatres were the first, outside of royalty, to forge an identity on life’s wider stage.
Double take …
Actresses had been synonymous with prostitutes at the start of the 1700s. Sarah Siddons’s generation were practically on a par with aristocrats: leading fashion; painted by the same artists. The ideal was to show off their dress sense at the theatre, yet project modesty and morality in their private lives. Siddons pulled off the trick like no other.
Grand designs …
When Gainsborough painted Siddons in 1785, both were royal favourites. Such was her good reputation that she read for the royal princesses that same year.
Fit for a queen …
She is depicted in a “levite” wraparound dress. The look she’s going for is regal composure. When her bearing was commented upon at court, she pointed out that as an actor she had “frequently personated queens”.
Gainsborough and the Theatre, The Holburne Museum, Bath, to 20 January
