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Actresses on canvas

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Post  eddie Wed Oct 19, 2011 7:16 pm

Rouges gallery: paintings put first actresses in the spotlight

An obsession with the looks and love lives of actresses is nothing new, as an exhibition of portraits of the first women on the stage makes cleaar.

Amanda Vickery
guardian.co.uk, Friday 14 October 2011 22.55 BST

Actresses on canvas Caught-in-the-act---Mary--007
Caught in the act … Mary Robinson as Perdita (1782) by John Hoppner.Photograph: Chawton House Library, Hampshire

Is it any wonder actresses are neurotic about their appearance? If anyone ever doubted the sexist scrutiny they are up against, Michael Parkinson's 1975 interview with Helen Mirren (a YouTube sensation) is a sobering reminder. "Critics spend as much time discussing her physical attributes as assessing her acting ability," says Parky, by way of introduction for the "sex queen" of the RSC, that byword for "sluttish eroticism". Nor does he seem much interested in Mirren's acting, either. "You are, in quotes, a 'serious actress'; do you find what might best be described as your equipment hinders you in that pursuit?"

The First Actresses: Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons
National Portrait Gallery,
London

Starts 20 October 2011
Until 8 January 2012

You can understand why many women on stage and screen prefer the title "actor" – as an assertion of their professionalism and to fend off the prurient personal remarks the "actress" has suffered since she first trod the boards in the 1660s.

The emergence of the actress on the Restoration stage was revolutionary. As every pupil of Shakespeare knows, it was men in drag who took the ladies' parts before. Imagine the frisson, then, when Nell Gwyn first showed herself aged 14 to a packed house at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, in 1664. This unprecedented female exhibition provoked salacious frenzy, which theatre companies hoped to harness to their profit.

The showcasing of beauties in "breeches roles" exploded ideas of decorum. Actresses welcomed the chance to demonstrate the virtuosity demanded by parts such as Viola and Rosalind. But the display of their shapely legs was condemned as an exercise in "brazenness" which confirmed the shameless immodesty and sexual availability of the actress. That both theatre-land and prostitution had their metropolis in Covent Garden was not lost on the press. From the first, the "actress" of popular imagination was a shimmering mixture of whore, coquette, talent and celebrity.

Nell Gwyn, still one of history's most famous Englishwomen, might justly claim to be the original female celebrity. Born in obscurity, barely literate and no conventional beauty (red headed and hazel eyed), Gwyn was as celebrated for her ready wit as her legs – which she revealed even when cast as an angel in The Virgin Mary. Within months of her debut, Nell was known to the public by her first name. In becoming mistress to Charles II, but never hoity toity, she became the people's Cinderella, and a Protestant one at that. "Nell" was both star and brand.

A new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, The First Actresses: Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons, investigates the concept of the "actress" in all its troubling contradictions. The artists include Reynolds, Gainsborough, Hoppner, Lawrence, Zoffany and Gillray.

The exhibition is the brainchild of Gill Perry. When she was writing her book Spectacular Flirtations: Viewing the Actress in Eighteenth Century Art and Culture, she realised that the NPG had an exceptional collection of early actress portraits – "And not only that they are in Covent Garden," she says.

The idea appealed to Lucy Peltz, the NPG's curator of 18th-century portraits, because this "will be the first show to explore the importance of women in early English theatre, through portraiture, highlighting themes that are close to the Gallery's heart – gender, identity, representation and the history of celebrity culture."

The first actresses benefited from an emerging publicity machine that anticipated aspects of the modern star system. The explosion of print after the relaxation of censorship in the 1690s spawned theatre reviews, gossip columns and puffs, as well as adoring and salacious biographies. The burgeoning art market served their image too. Fans could gaze on their idols in glowing portraits in popular exhibitions and mass-produced prints. They could even take home a model of their favourite in porcelain (Kitty Clive as Mrs Riot or Sarah Siddons as Lady Macbeth) or a transfer printed on snuffbox, fan or screen.

Portraits of actresses were always crowd-pleasers at the Royal Academy, hanging next to the flower of the nobility – a juxtaposition that inflated the prestige of the performing arts. The actress was usually depicted in full theatrical make-up and flamboyant costume, posed seductively to beguile the viewer. "Portraiture is always a form of dazzling performance, not a mirror image," Perry points out. But the audience conflated the painted lady with the real woman, and the actress with her role.

The canniest performers stage-managed their public appearances to enhance their reputations. Mary "Perdita" Robinson used her well-reported outings in "her chariot" to advertise her versatility. As Laetitia Hawkins wrote in her diary: "Today she was a paysanne, with her straw hat tied at the back of her head … yesterday she perhaps had been dressed as a belle of Hyde Park, trimmed, powdered, patched, painted to the utmost powder of rouge and white lead; tomorrow she would be the cravatted Amazon of the riding house."

Artists, critics and dramatists were as interested in the public persona and desirability of the actress as in her acting. Even singing and dancing were described as theatrical flirtation and coquetry. But women were not passive victims of the new cultural marketplace. They constituted an opinionated section of the audience for plays, as for opera, concerts, assemblies and exhibitions. Meanwhile the first female journalists, novelists and playwrights managed to live by their pens. Many actresses including Susanne Centlivre, Charlotte Charke, Kitty Clive, Eliza Haywood, Elizabeth Inchbald, Susanna Rowson, Siddons and Robinson enjoyed a second career as playwrights and authors, some deliberately writing challenging roles for women.

Others like Lavinia Fenton, Elizabeth Farren, Frances Abington and Dorothy Jordan used their charisma to scale the social ladder. Their leap "from gutter to royal mistress or aristocratic wife might surprise the Hello! generation", Peltz says.

The skill with which actresses managed and manipulated their public reputations is striking. Clive, for instance, was a separated wife, who shone in breeches parts, comedy and oratorio, attracting numerous admirers. By 1744, she enjoyed a salary of £300 a year – twice the annual income of the director of the British Museum. She shrewdly maintained a reputation for chastity. At her death, Horace Walpole sniffed: "The comic muse with her retired. And shed a tear when she expired."

Critics lingered over Siddons's perfection of form. "Her height is above the middle size, but not at all inclined to em-bon-point. There is sufficient muscle to bestow a roundness upon the limbs. The symmetry of her person is exact and captivating." But Siddons conveyed the impression she was above such tosh. She harped on her love for her children and vaunted her aristocratic contacts, carrying herself with regal dignity. This air of moral rectitude and personal nobility leant credence to her tragic performances and informed the grandiloquence of her portrait by Reynolds.

However, as Perry acknowledges, the "construction of the actress as a celebrity brand was a fickle process". A reputation could be as easily demolished as made in print, especially by dredging up a scurrilous sexual history. Being a lofty vehicle of erotic fantasy was one thing, a whorish backstory was quite another. No wonder so many actresses turned to autobiography or commissioned self-portraits to frame their own story. "Artists – even in satirical prints – paid less notice to the breasts of actresses than critics did," comments Shearer West in her essay on beauty in the catalogue. Jordan's "bosom concealed everything but its own charms", frothed one reviewer.

Commentary on the appearance of actresses was not always positive. Beautiful females were supposed to be symmetrical, irrespective of the demands of the role, and performers could be castigated for being either to fat or too thin. Farren, a comedienne, was mocked for her flat chest and bottom. Most actresses had no choice but to soldier on through heavy pregnancy and inevitably feared for their livelihood when they could no longer convince as pert ingénues. When Garrick was urged to restage The Jealous Wife for Hannah Pritchard (then aged 57) he recoiled at her "great Bubbies, Nodding head & no teeth – O Sick – Sick – Spew".

When modern critics rate a female performance on whether it's theatrical Viagra or doubt that a woman is thin enough to play Juliet, they invoke a long and dishonourable tradition. "Modern actors should see the first actresses as trailblazers, fighting prejudice and innuendo," Perry concludes. Certainly women today might take comfort that so many of their forebears managed to seize the public relations initiative and shape the culture that so objectified them.
eddie
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Post  Nah Ville Sky Chick Wed Oct 19, 2011 8:16 pm

Actresses on canvas ART419202

This lady is in my family tree, Mrs Jordan actress. She is also in Dave Cameron's. pig affraid

She was a bit of a girl, google her !!
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Post  ISN Wed Oct 19, 2011 11:59 pm

hate to break the rules but this is not an actress......but when I heard 'on canvas'......I had to post this......

http://benheine.deviantart.com/art/Flesh-and-Acrylic-C-Madison3-262759205

I'll endeavour to google the lovely Mrs Jordan, Nashie...Smile

that's a sad tale, Nashie.....

no doubt these days she'd be another Scarlett Johansson....
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Post  eddie Thu Oct 20, 2011 7:28 pm

Nah Ville Sky Chick wrote:Actresses on canvas ART419202

This lady is in my family tree, Mrs Jordan actress.

A lady of easy virtue, eh? Heh heh heh. cyclops
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