The First English Actress at the Museum

The National Portrait Gallery (London, United Kingdom) opens the first exhibition to explore art and theatre in eighteenth-century England through portraits of women. With 53 portraits the exhibition shows the remarkable popularity of actress-portraits and provides a vivid spectacle of eighteenth-century femininity, fashion and theatricality.
 
The First Actresses: Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons shows large paintings of actresses in their celebrated stage roles, intimate and sensual off-stage portraits and mass-produced caricatures and prints, and explores how they contributed to the growing reputation and professional status of leading female performers.
 
The exhibition combines much-loved works by artists such as Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, John Hoppner, Thomas Lawrence, Johan Zoffany and James Gillray, with some newly discovered works such as the National Portrait Gallery's new acquisition of the Three Witches from Macbeth by Daniel Gardner. Actresses featured in the exhibition include Nell Gwyn, Kitty Clive, Hester Booth, Lavinia Fenton, Peg Woffington, Sarah Siddons, Mary Robinson, Dorothy Jordan, Elizabeth Farren, Giovanna Baccelli and Elizabeth Linley.
 
Starting with the emergence of the actress's profession in the late seventeenth century, The First Actresses: Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons shows how women performers, in drama, as well as music and dance, were key figures within a spectacular celebrity culture. The exhibition also reveals the many ways in which women performers stimulated artistic innovation and creativity and provoked intellectual debate.

Date: until January 8.
Location: National Portrait Gallery. St Martin's Place. London. WC2H 0HE. United Kingdom.
Opening hours: Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays from 10am to 6pm. Thursdays and Fridays from 10am to 9pm.

See some othe works in the following slideshow: