The following description for Portrait of Sarah Siddons has been prepared entirely by the current owner, Roberts S. Fastov, Esq., and, at the collector’s request, has not been edited by Sloans & Kenyon
Note 1) The painting below is
another version of the above Stuart' portrait of Sarah Siddons, 1787 owned by
the National Portrait Gallery, London. Oil on
canvas. 29 ½ in. x 24 1/2 in.. Given by
John Thadeus Delane, 1858. Primary Collection. NPG 50
Mr. Fastov discovered the National
Gallery portrait, when he was researching the possibility that this portrait
could be by Gilbert Stuart, as he knew that this was an English style portrait,
c. 1790; it manifested thin pinkish glazing on the cheeks, almost translucent,
which was a hall mark of Stuart's painting technique, and knew that Stuart was
painting in England in this period. While it cannot be determined to an
absolute legal certainty as to whether the National Portrait Gallery version or
the painting being offered at this auction is the original and which is the
replica, the fact that the painting to be auctioned, in general,
appears to manifest more spontaneous, excited brush work, which is more
consistent with its being an original work, rather than a replica, particularly
in Stuart’s painting of the tree leaves and sky in the background, and measures 30 in. x 25 in. and the Portrait Gallery version is
29 ½ in. x 24 1/2 in., logically and reasonably
strongly suggests that the auction version is the original and the Portrait
Gallery version is a smaller replica painted by Stuart. The reason for this is
that 30 in. x 25 in. or slightly larger, e.g. up to 30 ½ in. and up to
25 ½ in. or slightly smaller, e.g. 29 7/8 in. x 24 3/4, in. or a combination of
one or both sides side being slightly larger or smaller, was the standard size
for many bust or ½ length original portraits in England commissioned at that
time from all of the major portrait artists, including artists such as Sir
Joshua Reynolds, and 29 ½ in. and 24 ½ in.
was not a standard size for original commissioned portraits. Compare the huge
number of 30 in. x 25 in.' with the handful of 29 ½ in. x 24 ½ in. 18th
century portraits on Google Images when one searches 18th century
portraits 30 in. x 25 in. portraits and 29 ½ in. x 24 ½ in. on Google. Stuart
painted many 30 in. x 25 original portraits. A review of the 116 Stuart
portraits offered at auction, per by
Artprice.com (Askart.com only listed 98 Stuart portraits), including a huge variety of poses
and sizes up to approximately 50 in. x 40 in. and 95 in. x 64 in., and as small as 19 ½ in. x 21 5/8 in., not one measures precisely 29 ½ x 24 ½, in.
but there are a few that are in the 29 in. x 24 in. range. However, there are
22 portraits measuring 30 in. x 25 in. precisely and 14 portraits within the 30
in. x 25 in. range, as discussed above. Thus, this auction painting is being
offered as the original Stuart portrait of Sarah Siddons, c. 1787.
Note 2) The following biographical
materials are taken from the Askart.com website:
in.Likely America's best-known portrait
painter, Gilbert Stuart is difficult to track biographically because so many
parts of his life have been embellished or cloaked by his biographers who have
romanticized the life of this man so associated with the portraits of George
Washington. And he also told untrue, embellished stories about himself. Stuart
was, in fact, a temperamental, hard-living man who lived way beyond his means,
which left him and his family in impoverished circumstances.
He was the son of a snuff-mill owner in North Kingstown, Rhode Island. Of
Scottish descent, he had the baptismal name of Gilbert Stewart but changed it
to the Jacobite spelling, wanting to be associated in name with the royal
Stuart family of England.
When the mill failed, the Stewart
family moved to Newport, Rhode Island where the young Gilbert took early
training from local portraitist Samuel King. In 1769, his early talent for
drawing was recognized by Cosmo Alexander, with whom he traveled in the
Southern Colonies and then to Edinburgh, Scotland. But Alexander died, and the
penniless Stuart had to work his way back to America as a seaman. He completed
several portraits of Newport persons including Frances Malbone.
In 1775, on the eve of the Battle of
Bunker Hill, he again sailed, this time to London where he worked as a church
organist because American colonial artists were not then well received in
England. From 1777, he spent five years studying art with expatriate court
painter, Benjamin West who taught Stuart many of the skills he acquired in
portrait painting, especially the painting of realistic, animated
faces--glowing light against dark background--for which he became noted. It was
a revival of the style of Rembrandt.
However, it was a full-length
portrait of a Scotsman, William Grant, as a skater that made Stuart's
reputation in England when the painting was exhibited in 1782 at the Royal
Academy. Later it was mistakenly attributed to Sir Henry Raeburn.
After this success, Stuart had many
commissions and was perceived to be in the same league as Sir Joshua Reynolds
and Thomas Gainsborough. But he became overwhelmed by debts, and in 1787, went
to Dublin, Ireland, where he continued his habit of collecting and quickly
spending his portrait fees before completing the work.
In 1792, he returned to America and
became the most highly regarded portraitist of his day with nearly everyone in
prominence in the government becoming one of his subjects. Always low on money
and known for erratic behavior, which some attributed to his genius, he
remained ever pursued by his creditors. He is buried in Boston in an unmarked
paupers grave.
Source:
Matthew Baigell, "Dictionary of American Art; "Docent Files, Phoenix
Art Museum"
Per
deyave.com: from A HISTORY OF AMERICAN ART by Sadakichi Hartmann:
"Gilbert Stuart,
born at Narragansett, R. I., is one of the most remarkable colourists and
portrait painters of modern times, and had for almost a century no superior on
this side of the Atlantic. His stay with West in London harmed the originality
of his work in no way; from the very start his art was as delicate and refined
as that of his contemporaries Romney and Gainsborough, with whom he
successfully competed. Many of the best years of his art life, however, were
spent in America, where he painted many notables of the day, among them George
Washington, who sat for him three times. (The Vaughan picture belongs to Mrs.
Joseph Harrison, Philadelphia, the Lansdowne, a full-length portrait, is at the
Philadelphia Academy, and the Athenaeum head at the Boston Museum of Fine
Arts.)
Brilliant colouring,
firm yet remarkably free handling, natural, life-like posing, and an individual
conception which dominates all the details of his workmanship, are the striving
characteristics of all his pictures. The richness of his flesh-tints, and his
unerring precision in modelling the face without the help of lines,— he always
remained true to his much quoted maxim, "There are no lines in
nature"— all apparently so simple and yet so massive and effective, are
astonishing. An inexhaustible virility and ever-buoyant enthusiasm furnished
the key-note of his character, and the result was portraits of men and women,
who seem alive and imbued with an individual character of their own, even if
the colour of their complexion is subject rather to an idealising method than
to nature. His brush work as well as his colour—with the exception of those
portraits that have of late acquired a curious purplish hue — are as
interesting today as they were one hundred years ago. He was a past master of
his art, and it took almost a century of ceaseless work and endeavour before
American painters learned to paint again with the same ease and grace as did
Gilbert Stuart, when our American art was still
in its swaddling- clothes."
Askart.com lists 109
museums that hold works of art by Gilbert Stuart in their collections. Per
Askart.com, this the highest number of museum holdings for a significant 18th
century American portrait artist on Askart.com. John Singleton Copley, Charles
Willson Peale and Benjamin West works are in the collections of 74, 61 and 87,
museums respectively.
Note 3) Sarah Siddons was one of
England's most important and popular actresses of the late 18th
century. Per Wikipedia:
"Sarah Siddons (5
July 1755 – 8 June 1831) was a Welsh actress, the best-known tragedienne of the 18th century. She was the elder sister of John Philip Kemble, Charles Kemble, Stephen Kemble, Ann Hatton and Elizabeth Whitlock, and the aunt of Fanny Kemble. She was most famous for her portrayal of the Shakespearean character, Lady Macbeth, a character she made her own.[1] The Sarah
Siddons Society continues to
present the Sarah
Siddons Award in Chicago
every year to a prominent actress….
Career
In 1774, Siddons won her first success as Belvidera in Thomas
Otway's Venice
Preserved. This brought her to the attention
of David Garrick,
who sent his deputy to see her as Calista in Nicholas Rowe's Fair
Penitent, the result being that she was
engaged to appear at Drury
Lane. Owing to inexperience as well as
other circumstances, her first appearances as Portia and
in other parts were not well received and she received a note from the manager
of Drury Lane stating that her services would not be required. She was, in her
own words:
banished
from Drury Lane as a worthless candidate for fame and fortune [1]
In 1777, she went on "the circuit" in the
provinces. For the next six years she worked in provincial companies (in
particular York and Bath), gradually building up a reputation, and her next
Drury Lane appearance, on 10 October 1782, could not have been more different.
She was an immediate sensation playing the title role in Garrick's adaptation
of a play by Thomas Southerne, Isabella,
or, The Fatal Marriage….
Her most famous role was that of Lady Macbeth; it was the grandeur of her emotions as she expressed Lady
Macbeth's murderous passions that held her audiences spellbound. In Lady
Macbeth she found the highest and best scope for her acting abilities. She was
tall and had a striking figure, brilliant beauty, powerfully expressive eyes,
and solemn dignity of demeanour which enabled her to claim the character as her
own.[1]
After Lady Macbeth she played Desdemona, Rosalind, Ophelia and Volumnia,
all with great success; but it was as Queen Catherine in Henry VIII
that she discovered a part almost as
well adapted to her acting powers as that of Lady Macbeth.[1] She once told Samuel
Johnson that Catherine was her
favourite role, as it was the most natural.[2]
It was the beginning of twenty years in which she was the
undisputed queen of Drury Lane. Her celebrity status has been called
"mythical" and "monumental," and by "the mid-1780's
Siddons was established as a cultural icon, along with Hannah Murphy, another theatre great of the time."[3]She mixed with the literary and social elites of London
society, and her acquaintances included Samuel Johnson, Edmund
Burke, Hester
Thrale Piozzi, and William
Windham.
In 1802 she left Drury Lane and subsequently appeared from
time to time on the stage of the rival establishment, Covent Garden. It was there, on 29 June 1812, that she gave perhaps the
most extraordinary farewell performance in theatre history. She was playing her
most famous role, Lady
Macbeth, and the audience refused to allow
the play to continue after the end of the sleepwalking scene. Eventually, after
tumultuous applause from the pit, the curtain reopened and Siddons was
discovered sitting in her own clothes and character — whereupon she made
an emotional farewell speech to the audience lasting eight minutes.
Mrs. Siddons formally retired from the stage in 1812, but
occasionally appeared on special occasions. Her last appearance was on 9 June
1819 as Lady Randolph in John
Home's Douglas.[1]….
Acting
power
"Wonderful stories are told of her powers over the
spectators. Macready relates that when she played Aphasia in Tamburlaine,
after seeing her lover strangled before her eyes, so terrible was her agony as
she fell lifeless upon the stage, that the audience believed she was really
dead, and only the assurance of the manager could pacify them. One night Charles Young was playing Beverly to her Mrs. Beverly in The
Gamester, and in the great scene was so overwhelmed by her pathos that he
could not speak. Unto the last she received the homage of the great; even the
Duke of Wellington attended her receptions, and carriages were drawn up before
her door nearly all day long."[4]
On the night of May 2, 1797, Sarah Siddons's character
of Agnes in Lillo's Fatal Curiosity suggested
murder with "an expression in her face that made the flesh of the
spectator creep." In the audience was Crabb Robinson, whose respiration grew difficult. Robinson went into a fit
of hysterics and was nearly ejected from the theatre….
Sarah
Siddons as the Tragic Muse by Sir Joshua Reynolds,
painting at The Huntington, San Marino, California
Sir Joshua Reynolds painted his famous portrait, "Mrs.
Siddons as the Tragic Muse," in 1784, and signed it on the hem of her
dress, "for," he told her, "I have resolved to go down to
posterity on the hem of your garment."
In 1950, Joseph Mankiewicz used the portrait extensively in All About Eve. The portrait itself is hung at the top of the entrance
staircase to Margo's apartment where it is seen at various times throughout the
party scene, from Addison and Claudia's arrival to the close-up of it with
which the scene ends. Additionally, he invented the (then) fictitious Sarah
Siddons Society and its award, which is a statuette modeled upon the painting.
The film opens with a close-up of the award, and ends with Phoebe holding it.[7]
In 1957, Bette Davis posed as Sarah Siddons in a re-creation
of the painting staged as part of the Pageant of the Masters.[7]
Cultural
references
At the time of the release of the film All About Eve, the "Sarah Siddons Award" was a purely
fictitious award. However, since 1952
there exists the Sarah Siddons Award for
dramatic achievement in theatre: a genuine and prestigious award, named in honor
of Siddons. The award is given annually in Chicago by
the Sarah Siddons Society.
In the week beginning 12 April 2010 BBC Radio 4 dramatised
in five parts a story about the long relationship between Sarah Siddons and the
famous artist Thomas Lawrence.
The drama was written by David
Pownall.
The London Underground had
an electric locomotive built by Metropolitan-Vickers named after her. Used on the Metropolitan
Line, No. 12 lasted along with
other locomotives, until 1961. Painted a maroon colour, she is now the only one
of the original twenty locomotives to remain preserved in working order.[8]
There is a pub in her home town of Breton named after her, The Sarah Siddons Inn. (Footnote text
omitted)"
Note 4) Sarah Siddons' portrait was painted by every major
English portrait artist of the time, including Reynolds and Gainsborough, and
their portraits were large portraits of Siddons and are dramatic and beautiful
paintings. The above-described incident involving Reynolds, while painting her
portrait, he " signed it on the hem of her dress, "for," he told
her, "I have resolved to go down to posterity on the hem of your
garment," demonstrates her power to enthrall and captivate the artists as
well as the people who saw her act on stage. As the National Portrait Gallery
stated: "Describing herself as an "ambitious candidate for
fame," Siddons used portraiture for publicity. Even before Stuart's
portrait was completed it had received glowing reviews for its "spirit and
delicacy," which is a fair assessment of this Stuart portrait at this
auction, which is more intimate, subdued and delicate. It clearly shows
Siddons' true, unvarnished beauty and a seeming intelligence and purposefulness,
than the more grandiose, dramatic portraits of Reynolds and Gainsborough. The
Stuart portrait s is one, which portrays her blinding beauty with restraint and
an underlying integrity and spirit in an outdoor pastoral setting. It is first
class Stuart portraiture of a very important and beautiful and highly talented
English cultural icon of the last quarter of the 18th century and
the early years of the 19th century.
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Many Stuart portrait sales at
auction (below), including numerous portraits of George Washington, which
always sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars, reaching a peak of
$8,136,000 for The Constable-Hamilton Portrait of Washington sold by
Sotheby’s, NY on 11/30/2005. However, as set forth below, there were a number
of auction records of Stuart portraits of a boy, men and women, most of whom
are relatively obscure from a cultural and historical standpoint, who have
brought relatively low prices, but some of which were portraits of sitters
who may have had some cultural and/or historical significance have brought
relatively high prices, three of which sold for $455,000 (Master Clarke),
$296,00 (John Campbell) and $220,500 (Commodore William Bainbridge), and one
of which brought $1,888,000 (Dr. William Smith). In addition, Stuart’s
portrait of John Jay brought $900,000. One Stuart portrait of Mrs. Robert
Morris (Mary White), an older, not particularly attractive or beautiful
woman, who was totally obscure, but for her marriage to Robert Morris,
brought $168,000, but was merely a “head” study and considerably smaller than
this Siddons auction portrait. Some other Stuart portraits of historically
and culturally obscure, relatively unattractive women brought prices of
approximately $50,000 to $74,500 or less. However, none of these portraits of
these relatively obscure women and men described above had the stunning and
aristocratic beauty of Sarah Siddons or even came close to matching her
status and fame as a historical cultural icon, who is still recognized and
memorialized as such by organizations as the Sarah Siddons Society. |
Stuart was and remains one of best American born portrait
artists in the 18th century, along with John Singleton Copley,
Benjamin West and Charles Willson Peale, and was highly regarded in England;
this auction portrait of Sarah Siddons by Stuart is a well-executed portrait
with his characteristic, subtle, thin, reddish-pink glazing of the cheeks, and
is an extremely sensitive, understated and intimate portrait of a very
beautiful woman and one of the most famous English actresses who acted before
many people for approximately 40 years, which made her an English cultural and
historical icon in the late 18th century and 19th
century, who is treasured till this day. She was the inspiration for the
formation of the Siddons Society, as described above. Given all of the
foregoing biographical, historical, and cultural considerations, and the
auction records for Stuart sales discussed above and set forth below, Mr.
Fastov believes that the presale estimate of $150,000-$300,000 for this Stuart
portrait of Sara Siddons is reasonable and justifiable and should cause active,
aggressive bidding for this painting by anyone who collects Stuart portraiture;
is interested in fine 18th century English or American portraiture;
or who are collectors or groups having an interest in Sarah Siddons, like the
Siddons Society, or who are interested in English theatrical portraits or
English cultural history of the late 18th century/early 19th
century.
The following auction records of some relatively comparable
Stuart portraits supporting the foregoing analysis follow:
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