Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cc8bf7c57-hbs24 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-11T03:28:07.607Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Art of the Actress

Fashioning Identities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2024

Laura Engel
Affiliation:
Duquesne University, Pittsburgh

Summary

This Element looks at the art of the actress in the eighteenth century. It considers how visual materials across genres, such as prints, portraits, sculpture, costumes, and accessories, contribute to the understanding of the nuances of female celebrity, fame, notoriety, and scandal. The 'art' of the actress refers to the actress represented in visual art, as well as to the actress's labor and skill in making art ephemerally through performance and tangibly through objects. Moving away from the concept of the 'actress as muse,' a relationship that privileges the role of the male artist over the inspirational subject, the author focuses instead on the varied significance of representations, reproductions, and re-animations of actresses, female artists, and theatrical women across media. Via case studies, the Element explores how the archive charts both a familiar and at times unknown narrative about female performers of the past.
Get access
Type
Element
Information
Online ISBN: 9781108973519
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication: 08 February 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alberge, Dalya. “Graphic Portrait of Charles II’s Mistress Comes to Light.” The Guardian, June 28, 2011, www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/jun/28/nell-gwyn-charles-mistress-painting.Google Scholar
Albinson, A. Cassandra. “The Construction of Desire, Lawrence’s Portraits of Women.” In Thomas Lawrence: Regency Power & Brilliance, edited by Albinson, A. Cassandra, Funnell, Peter, and Peltz, Lucy, 2754. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Albinson, A. Cassandra. “New Ambition: Experimentation and Innovation in Portraiture Practice.” In Thomas Lawrence: Regency Power & Brilliance, edited by Albinson, A. Cassandra, Funnell, Peter, and Peltz, Lucy, 189216. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Albinson, A. Cassandra, Funnell, Peter, and Peltz, Lucy, eds. Thomas Lawrence: Regency Power & Brilliance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Asleson, Robyn, ed. Notorious Muse: The Actress in British Art and Culture, 1776–1812. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Asleson, Robyn, ed. A Passion for Performance: Sarah Siddons and Her Portraitists. Los Angeles, CA: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1999.Google Scholar
Baiesi, Serena. “The Influence of the Italian Improvvisatrici on British Romantic Women Writers: Letitia Elizabeth Landon’s Response.” In British Romanticism and Italian Literature, edited by Bandiera, Laura and Saglia, Diego, 181–91. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005.Google Scholar
Barchas, Janine. “Reporting on What Jane Saw 2.0: Female Celebrity and Sensationalism in Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery.” ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830 5, no. 1 (2015): 126.Google Scholar
Batchelor, Jennie, and Larkin, Alison. Jane Austen Embroidery: Regency Patterns Reimagined for Modern Stitchers. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2020.Google Scholar
Baum, Kelly, Bayer, Andrea, and Wagstaff, Sheena, eds. Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016.Google Scholar
Baumgärtel, Bettina, ed. Angelica Kauffman. Munich: Hirmer, 2020.Google Scholar
Berry, Mary. The Fashionable Friends: A Comedy in Five Acts. As Performed by Their Majesties Servants at the Theatre Royale, Drury Lane. 2nd ed. London: J. Ridgeway, 1802.Google Scholar
Breashears, Caroline. “Desperately Seeking Mary Anne Clarke: Scandal, Suppression, and Problems in Attribution.” Script & Print 36, no. 1 (2012): 526.Google Scholar
Brylowe, Thora. “Angelica Kauffman and the Sister Arts.” In The Edinburgh Companion to Romanticism and the Arts, edited by McCue, Maureen and Thomas, Sophie, 391407. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022.Google Scholar
Dashkova, Ekaterina R. The Memoirs of Princess Dashkova. Translated and edited by Fitzlyon, Kyril. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Davidson, Hillary. Dress in the Age of Jane Austen: Regency Fashion. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019.Google Scholar
Doran, Susan, ed. Elizabeth and Mary: Royal Cousins, Rival Queens. London: British Library, 2021.Google Scholar
Dryden, John. Tyrannick Love, or The Royal Martyr: A Tragedy. London: H. Herringman, 1670.Google Scholar
Elfenbein, Andrew. “Lesbian Aestheticism on the Eighteenth-Century Stage.” Eighteenth-Century Life 25, no 1 (2001): 116.Google Scholar
Engel, Laura. Austen, Actresses, and Accessories: Much Ado about Muffs. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engel, Laura. Fashioning Celebrity: Eighteenth-Century British Actresses and Strategies for Image-Making. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Engel, Laura. “The Muff Affair: Fashioning Celebrity in the Portraits of Late-Eighteenth-Century British Actresses.” Fashion Theory 13, no. 3 (2009): 279–98.Google Scholar
Engel, Laura. “Stage Beauties: Actresses and Celebrity Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century.” Literature Compass 13, no. 12 (2016): 749–61.Google Scholar
Engel, Laura. Women, Performance, and the Material of Memory: The Archival Tourist, 1780–1915. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.Google Scholar
Fraser, Flora. The Unruly Queen: The Life of Queen Caroline. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Freeman, Lisa A.Mourning the ‘Dignity of the Siddonian Form.’” Eighteenth-Century Fiction 27, nos. 34 (2015): 597629.Google Scholar
Freeman, Lisa A.On the Art of Dramatic Probability: Elizabeth Inchbald’s Remarks for the British Theatre.” Theatre Survey 62, no. 2 (2021): 163–81.Google Scholar
Funnell, Peter. “Lawrence among Men: Friends, Patrons and the Male Portrait.” In Thomas Lawrence: Regency Power & Brilliance, edited by Albinson, A. Cassandra, Funnell, Peter, and Peltz, Lucy, 126. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Gross, Jonathan David. The Life of Anne Damer: Portrait of a Regency Artist. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013.Google Scholar
Grosvenor, Bendor. Bright Souls: The Forgotten Story of Britain’s First Female Artists. London: Lyon & Turnbull, 2019.Google Scholar
Hall, Kim F. Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Hunting, Penelope. My Dearest Heart: The Artist Mary Beale (1633–1699). London: Unicorn, 2019.Google Scholar
Hyde, Melissa, and Milam, Jennifer, eds. Women, Art, and the Politics of Identity in Eighteenth-Century Europe. Aldershot, VT: Ashgate, 2003.Google Scholar
Joyce, Kristin, and Addison, Shellei. Pearls: Ornament and Obsession. London: Thames & Hudson, 1992.Google Scholar
Kunz, George Frederick, and Hugh Stevenson, Charles. The Book of the Pearl: The History, Art, Science, and Industry of the Queen of Gems. 1908. New York: Dover, 1993.Google Scholar
MacLeod, Catharine, and Alexander, Julia Marciari, eds. Painted Ladies: Women at the Court of Charles II. New Haven, CT: Yale Center for British Art, 2001.Google Scholar
MacLeod, Catharine, and Julia, Marciari Alexander. “The ‘Windsor Beauties’ and the Beauties Series in Restoration England.” In Politics, Transgression, and Representation at the Court of Charles II, edited by Julia Alexander, Marciari and MacLeod, Catharine, 81122. New Haven, CT: Yale Center for British Art, 2007.Google Scholar
Marciari Alexander, Julia, and MacLeod, Catharine, eds. Politics, Transgression, and Representation at the Court of Charles II. New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, 2007.Google Scholar
McCreery, Cindy. The Satirical Gaze: Prints of Women in Late Eighteenth-Century England. Oxford: Clarendon, 2004.Google Scholar
McGirr, Elaine. “Nell Gwyn’s Breasts and Colley Cibber’s Shirts: Celebrity Actors and Their Famous ‘Parts.’” In Intimacy and Celebrity in Eighteenth-Century Literary Culture: Public Interiors, edited by Jones, Emrys and Joule, Victoria, 1334. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGirr, Elaine. “Touching Scenes: Austen, Intimacy, and Staging Lovers’ Vows.” In Jane Austen, Sex, and Romance: Engaging with Desire in the Novels and Beyond, edited by Nachumi, Nora and Oppenheim, Stephanie, 164–72. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2022.Google Scholar
McPherson, Heather. Art and Celebrity in the Age of Reynolds and Siddons. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2017.Google Scholar
Mudge, Bradford. “‘Enchanting Witchery’: Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Portrait of Kitty Fisher As Cleopatra.” Eighteenth-Century Life 40, no. 1 (2016): 3258.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mudge, Bradford. “Gazing Games: Portraits and Satire in Rowlandson’s Connoisseurs.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 55, no. 2 (2022): 163–89.Google Scholar
Noble, Percy. Anne Seymour Damer: A Woman of Art and Fashion, 1748–1828. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Company, 1908.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, Felicity. Rival Queens: Actresses, Performance, and the Eighteenth- Century British Theater. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Ockman, Carol, et al. Sarah Bernhardt: The Art of High Drama. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Perry, Gill. Spectacular Flirtations: Viewing the Actress in British Art and Theater, 1768–1820. London: Paul Mellon Centre, 2008.Google Scholar
Perry, Gill, Roach, Joseph, and West, Shearer. The First Actresses: Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Phillips, Chelsea. Carrying All before Her: Celebrity Pregnancy and the London Stage, 1689–1800. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2022.Google Scholar
Pointon, Marcia. Brilliant Effects: A Cultural History of Gem Stones and Jewellery. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Porter, Linda. Mistresses: Sex and Scandal at the Court of Charles II. New York: Pan Macmillan, 2021.Google Scholar
Rauser, Amelia. The Age of Undress: Art, Fashion, and the Classical Ideal in the 1790s. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2020.Google Scholar
Rauser, Amelia. Caricature Unmasked: Irony, Authenticity, and Individualism in Eighteenth-Century English Prints. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Rauser, Amelia. “Living Statues and Neoclassical Dress in Late Eighteenth-Century Naples.” Art History 38, no. 3 (2015): 462–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ribeiro, Aileen. Dress and Morality. New York: Bloomsbury, 2003.Google Scholar
Roach, Joseph. It. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roman, Cynthia. “The Art of Lady Diana Beauclerk: Horace Walpole and Female Genius.” In Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill, edited by Snodin, Michael, 155–70. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Rosenfeld, Sybil. Temples of Thespis: Some Private Theatres and Theatricals in England and Wales, 1700–1820. London: Society for Theatre Research, 1978.Google Scholar
Rosenthal, Angela. Angelica Kauffman: Art and Sensibility. London: Paul Mellon Centre, 2006.Google Scholar
Rosenthal, Laura J. Ways of the World: Theater and Cosmopolitanism in the Restoration and Beyond. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2020.Google Scholar
Roworth, Wendy Wassyng, ed. Angelica Kauffman: A Continental Artist in Georgian England. London: Reaktion Books, 1992.Google Scholar
Schmid, Susanne. “Mary Berry’s Fashionable Friends on Stage (1801).” The Wordsworth Circle 43, no. 3 (2012): 172–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schneider, Rebecca. Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment. London: Routledge, 2011.Google Scholar
Sharpe, Kevin. “‘Thy Longing Country’s Darling and Desire’: Aesthetics, Sex, and Politics in the England of Charles II.” In Politics, Transgression, and Representation at the Court of Charles II, edited by Alexander, Julia Marciari and MacLeod, Catharine, 132. New Haven, CT: Yale Center for British Art, 2007.Google Scholar
Shen, Fiona Lindsay. Pearls: Nature’s Perfect Gem. London: Reaktion Books, 2022.Google Scholar
Sherriff, Mary D.Pour l’histoire des femmes artistes: Historiographie, politique et théorie (For a History of Women Artists: Historiography, Politics, and Theory).” Perspective 1 (2017): 91112.Google Scholar
Simon, Robin “‘Strong Impressions of Their Art’: Zoffany and the Theatre.” In Johan Zoffany RA: Society Observed, edited by Postle, Martin, 5073. New Haven, CT: Yale Center for British Art, Royal Academy of Arts, 2011.Google Scholar
Spies-Gans, Paris A. A Revolution on Canvas: The Rise of Women Artists in Britain and France, 1760–1830. London: Paul Mellon Centre, 2022.Google Scholar
Strobel, Heidi A. The Artistic Matronage of Queen Charlotte (1744–1818): How a Queen Promoted Both Art and Female Artists in English Society. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2011.Google Scholar
Sunday, Skyler. “Rendering Documentary Portraiture: An Interrogation of Archival Discourse through a Critical Exploration of Nineteenth-Century Stage Actress Charlotte Cushman’s Material Memory.” Unpublished master’s thesis, Duquesne University, 2022.Google Scholar
Taylor, David Francis. The Politics of Parody: A Literary History of Caricature, 1760–1830. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018.Google Scholar
Tomalin, Claire. Mrs Jordan’s Profession: The Story of a Great Actress and a Future King. New York: Knopf, 1995.Google Scholar
Tuite, Clara. “Comedy, Too Fatal Emblem: Anne Damer and Occult Theatricality.” Eighteenth-Century Fiction 27, nos. 34 (2015): 557–96.Google Scholar
Turner, Katherine. “Daphne du Maurier’s Mary Anne: Rewriting the Regency Romance As Feminist History.” University of Toronto Quarterly 86, no. 4 (2017): 5477.Google Scholar
Vickery, Amanda. “Branding Angelica: Reputation Management in Late Eighteenth-Century England.” Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 43, no. 1 (2020): 324.Google Scholar
Walpole, Horace. Anecdotes of Painting in England. 1786. London: Alexander Murray, 1871.Google Scholar
Warsh, Molly A. American Baroque: Pearls and the Nature of Empire, 1492–1700. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018.Google Scholar
Webb, Richard. Mrs D: The Life of Anne Damer (1748–1828). Redditch, Worcestershire: Brewin Books, 2013.Google Scholar
West, Shearer. The Image of the Actor: Verbal and Visual Representation in the Age of Garrick and Kemble. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Winn, James Anderson. Queen Anne: Patroness of Arts. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.Google Scholar

Save element to Kindle

To save this element to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

The Art of the Actress
  • Laura Engel, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh
  • Online ISBN: 9781108973519
Available formats
×

Save element to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

The Art of the Actress
  • Laura Engel, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh
  • Online ISBN: 9781108973519
Available formats
×

Save element to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

The Art of the Actress
  • Laura Engel, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh
  • Online ISBN: 9781108973519
Available formats
×