Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
In this interdisciplinary volume, historians of art, literature, dress, and theater examine the impact of the actress on British art and culture of the Georgian era. From the celebrated doyennes of the stage to the demireps on the periphery of the profession, female performers are shown to have played a vital and hitherto under-appreciated role in the artist's studio, forging fruitful collaborations with leading artists and becoming nearly as influential in the studio as on the stage. Acting as models, muses, and patrons, actresses inspired a remarkable proliferation of images in which issues of theatricality, sexuality, and social mobility were explored in ways that were impossible in depictions of more "respectable" women.
Table of Contents
"Painted women" : Reynolds and the cult of the courtesan / Martin Postle -- Ambiguity and desire : metaphors of sexuality in late eighteenth-century representation of the actress / Gill Perry -- Shakespeare and the rival muses : Siddons versus Jordan / Jonathan Bate -- Costuming the part : a discourse of fashion and fiction in the image of the actress in England, 1776-1812 / Aileen Ribeiro -- The ideal shatters : Sarah Siddons, madness, and the dynamics of gesture / Frederick Burwick -- Body connoisseurship / Shearer West -- Painting, politics and the stage in the age of caricature / Heather McPherson -- Patina : Mrs. Siddons and the depth of surfaces / Joseph Roach.