In 1815, the Theatrical Inquisitor complained, half seriously, that those 'Muse[s]' whose 'beauty […] gives being to the poet's rapturous vision […] bind our nobles in chains, and our princes in links – of love'. The association of actresses with beauty and scandal had been established almost as long as the profession itself. England's actresses first trod the boards following the restoration of Charles II and the reopening of the theatres in 1660; Nell Gwynn, one of the most celebrated early actresses, was pregnant with the king's child by 1669.

Eleanor 'Nell' Gwyn (Gwynne) (1650–1687)

However, the intervening century had also seen changes in how actresses were represented, and, increasingly, how they represented themselves. The expansion of theatrical audiences, together with the development of the print trade, established the circumstances for what many scholars have characterised as the starting point of modern celebrity culture – upon which many actresses capitalised.

In 1665, diarist Samuel Pepys first reported seeing 'pretty witty Nell' at Drury Lane, Gwynn apparently famous enough to be known only by her first name. This remained the case into her afterlife: Charles II's supposed final words, 'Let not poor Nelly starve', have passed into legend, along with a profusion of anecdotes (such as Gwynn having spiked a rival's drink with laxatives) which belie the paucity of documentation about her life.

Samuel Pietersz Verelst's roundel of Gwynn is typical of her contemporary portraits in showing her with partially exposed breasts – a hallmark of the courtesan, and proof that her sexuality was a major feature of her popular identity. In fact, compared to her role as the king's mistress, Gwynn's career as an actress was remarkably brief: she is thought to have progressed from orange seller to actress in around 1664, retiring for good aged 21, in 1671.

Though the arrival of women on stage signalled a move away from the transvestite theatre (prior to 1660, women and girls had been personified on stage by adolescent boys), gender play continued to be a significant part of British theatre. The 'dancer-actress' Hester Booth became celebrated for her 'Harlequin Dance', a twist on a male character from the Italian commedia dell'arte. Though Booth also performed in plays by William Congreve, William Shakespeare, and Colley Cibber, her success as Harlequin is reflected in her portraiture.

The German scholar and traveller Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach reported that the English 'ma[de] such a to-do about [Booth as Harlequin] that her portrait in this costume is painted on snuff boxes'. One such portrait, by John Ellys, shows her in a long dress, and in a comparatively restrained pose, highlighting her elegant femininity. At the same time, movement is suggested by the absence of a hoop petticoat, and the dynamic flow of her hair, both of which help place her performance, and her innovation, at the heart of the picture.

John Gay's 'ballad opera' The Beggar's Opera was a sensation when it opened in 1728. William Hogarth's painting of the performance shows the moment in the play when the highwayman Macheath chooses between Lucy Lockit and Polly Peachum, played by Lavinia Fenton. However, though Fenton is depicted raising her hands towards the actor playing her father, this gesture also invokes a member of the audience: Charles Powlett, 3rd Duke of Bolton, seated at the right, who had recently become her lover. After the run of the Beggar's Opera concluded, Fenton retired to become his mistress, marrying him after the death of his first wife in 1751.

Fenton's performance as Polly made her, observed poet and satirist Alexander Pope, the 'favourite of the town: her pictures […] sold in great numbers, her life written, books of letters […] to her published'. The anonymous Life of Lavinia Beswick, alias Fenton, alias Polly Peachum is the first substantial actress-biography of the period. At the same time, Fenton trod a line between scandal and respectability. Hogarth shows her in white silk, setting her apart from her surroundings, but he also identifies her private life as part of the spectacle.

By the mid-century, the divide between actress and society figure was increasingly blurred. Sir Joshua Reynolds, one of the period's most celebrated portrait painters, painted aristocrats and actors both, including several portraits of Frances Abington, one of London's most popular comic actresses. Frances Abington as Miss Prue exposes the slippage between the actress's identities onstage and off. Though it resembles a society portrait, Abington wears the distinctive ruffles and cap associated with the naïve country girl 'Miss Prue' in Congreve's Love for Love. This direct allusion to the play provides the context (and partial justification) for the sitter's scandalously bold gesture: biting a fingernail, open mouthed.

Frances Abington (née Barton) as Miss Prue in William Congreve's 'Love for Love'

At the same time, Mrs Abington as the Comic Muse signals the elevation of the actress beyond any individual role, to the status of an idea. Here, Abington appears at full-length in Reynolds's 'Grand Manner' – an idealised style drawing on classical and Renaissance precedents – as 'Thalia', the Muse of Comedy.

Mrs Abington (c.1737–1815), as the Comic Muse

Timeless though she might have been, Abington later returned this painting so that the costume and hairstyle could be updated, a common practice among Reynolds's sitters, and one that shows the actress increasingly conscious of her status as leader of fashion.

In 1779, Mary Robinson delighted London as 'Perdita' in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, drawing the attention of the young George, Prince of Wales, who took her as his mistress. At the end of the affair, George commissioned a portrait of Robinson from Reynolds's rival, Thomas Gainsborough. Robinson sits meditatively in a landscape, holding a miniature of the prince.

In fact, during this period Robinson was waging a public war with George, who had abandoned her without an income; she later left London to establish herself as a novelist (taking the miniature with her and briefly lending it to Marie Antoinette). Robinson's memoirs, which insist on her pure love for the prince, were published a year after her death, in 1801, and demonstrate her determination to seize control of the public narrative. Nevertheless, she never fully escaped the public derision of the affair; in 1827, the theatrical historian James Boaden proclaimed that she had 'bec[o]me in melancholy reality the PERDITA', something her appearance in Gainsborough's melancholy portrait may have helped underline.

In 1785, Gainsborough painted another young actress. Born into the theatrical Kemble family, Sarah Siddons was establishing herself as a leading interpreter of tragic roles, particularly Lady Macbeth, which she began performing in the same year.

Indeed, Gainsborough would have been painting in full consciousness that Reynolds, his great rival, had exhibited his own portrait of Siddons as the 'Tragic Muse' in the previous year. Below is a studio copy made a few years after the original.

A detailed chalk study in the Cleveland Museum of Art suggests that Gainsborough may not have been granted as many sittings as he wanted. Indeed, the picture appears to have been produced as a promotional piece, the celebrity of the sitter drawing positive attention to the portraitist, rather than the other way around. Siddons is shown in fashionable dress, with no allusion to her profession (although her 'wrapping gown' would have been easy to slip on and off).

This glamorous yet understated portrait must have pleased Siddons, then cultivating an image both as a devoted mother, and a naturalistic performer. Like Robinson, she left an official statement on her life: a 35-page manuscript for her official biographer, Thomas Campbell. Her virtuous persona was well received by late eighteenth-century audiences, including increasing numbers of middle-class women.

Thomas Lawrence's majestic full-length portrait shows the grande dame of tragedy towards the end of her life, during a dramatic reading of John Milton's Paradise Lost. The ageing Siddons had been subject to mockery for her corpulence (something earlier actresses had generally avoided by retiring early). Yet Lawrence shows her as described by her fawning biographer, James Boaden: 'fuller in her person and more majestic than ever.'

The low vantage point forces the viewer to look up into the actress's face (bypassing the bosom that had overshadowed Nell Gwynn); the black dress, with its classical lines, alludes to her identification with tragedy. Meanwhile, the inclusion of the manuscript emphasises her engagement with the theatrical text as literature, making a claim for the intellectual seriousness of the acting profession – and, through the half-allusion to Milton, establishing the British actress as an indispensable part of Britain's cultural story. With Siddons, actresses were at last respectable.

Kirsten Tambling, writer and academic

This content was funded by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation

Further reading

James Boaden, Memoirs of Mrs Siddons, Interspersed with Anecdotes of Authors and Actors, 2 vols., Henry Colburn, 1827

Laura Engel, Fashioning Celebrity: Eighteenth-Century British Actresses and Strategies for Image Making, The Ohio State University Press, 2011

Gill Perry, with Joseph Roach and Shearer West, The First Actresses: Nell Gwynn to Sarah Siddons, National Portrait Gallery, 2011

Mary Darby Robinson, Memoirs of Mary Robinson, ed. by Joseph Fitzgerald Molloy, J. B. Lippincott Co., 1895

Robin Simon, Shakespeare, Hogarth & Garrick: Plays, Painting & Performance, Paul Holberton, 2023