Portrait of Sarah Siddons
| Portrait of Sarah Siddons | |
|---|---|
_-_Mrs_Siddons_-_N00188_-_National_Gallery.jpg) | |
| Artist | Thomas Lawrence |
| Year | 1804 |
| Type | Oil on canvas, portrait |
| Dimensions | 254 cm × 148 cm (100 in × 58 in) |
| Location | |
Portrait of Sarah Siddons is an 1804 portrait painting by the English artist Thomas Lawrence depicting the actress Sarah Siddons.
Siddons was the leading tragedienne of the early Regency era.[1] She was a member of the Kemble family of actors, that included her brothers John Philip Kemble and Charles Kemble. Lawrence was romantically involved with two of her daughters and had known her since his days as a child prodigy in Bath.
Lawrence depicts Siddons in full-length during a dramatic reading.[2] She is shown with volumes of plays by Thomas Otway and William Shakespeare.
The painting was commissioned by Charlotte FitzHugh, wife of William FitzHugh MP, and hung at their house Banisters, near Southampton.[3] FitzHugh presented it to the National Gallery in 1843,[4][5] and today it is in the collection of Tate Britain in London.[6]
See also
[edit]- John Philip Kemble as Cato, an 1812 portrait painting by Lawrence of her brother
References
[edit]- ↑ Mole p.123
- ↑ Pascoe p.84
- ↑ Cheryl Butler (Winter 2025), A Very Respectable Company: Jane Austen & Her Southampton Circle, Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal On-Line, Jane Austen Society of North America, Volume 46, No 1. The painting featured in an exhibition of the same name held at the SeaCity Museum in Southampton in 2025.
- ↑ Charlotte Fitzhugh, National Gallery. Accessed 2026-09-07
- ↑ Lord Ronald Gower and Algernon Graves, Sir Thomas Lawrence, with a catalogue of the artist's exhibited and engraved works, p. 159
- ↑ "'Mrs Siddons', Sir Thomas Lawrence, 1804". Tate Gallery collection online.
Bibliography
[edit]- Levey, Michael. Sir Thomas Lawrence. Yale University Press, 2005.
- Mole, Tom. Romanticism and Celebrity Culture, 1750-1850. Cambridge University Press, 2009.
- Pascoe, Judith. The Sarah Siddons Audio Files: Romanticism and the Lost Voice. University of Michigan Press, 2011.
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