A Passion for Performance: Sarah Siddons and Her Portraitists - Softcover

Bennett, Shelley; Leonard, Mark; West, Shearer

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0892365579 ISBN 13: 9780892365579

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2001

Synopsis

Renowned for her majestic beauty and impassioned performances, the English actress Sarah Siddons (1755-1831) revolutionized the aesthetics of eighteenth-century theater while inventing a complex public persona to promote her fame. Her flair for self-presentation was matched by the showmanship of the many artists who portrayed her.
Here three lively essays--by Robyn Asleson, Shelley Bennett, Mark Leonard, and Shearer West--explore Siddons's life and career, as well as her relationships with a number of artists. Notable among them was Sir Joshua Reynolds, whose masterpiece Sarah Siddons as the Tragic Muse became an icon of this great actress at the peak of her career. This lavish volume also brings together fifty-five other portraits of Siddons including works by Thomas Gainsborough, George Romney, Thomas Lawrence, and Gilbert Stuart.

About this title

About the Author:

Robyn Asleson, research associate at the Huntington Library, San Marino, California and author of Albert Moore: The Analysis of Beauty, Shelley Bennett, curator at the Huntington and author of Thomas Stothard: The Mechanisms of Art Patronage in England, Mark Leonard and Shearer West.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0892365579
• ISBN 13: 9780892365579
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160
• Editor: Asleson Robyn