{"id":8836,"date":"2011-12-05T09:00:53","date_gmt":"2011-12-05T09:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.badreputation.org.uk\/?p=8836"},"modified":"2011-12-05T09:00:53","modified_gmt":"2011-12-05T09:00:53","slug":"review-the-first-actresses-national-portrait-gallery-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/2011\/12\/05\/review-the-first-actresses-national-portrait-gallery-london\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: The First Actresses, National Portrait Gallery, London"},"content":{"rendered":"

Perhaps one reason we now refer almost exclusively to \u2018actors\u2019 is that, for the longest time, the word \u2018actress\u2019 was synonymous with \u2018prostitute\u2019. Presumably this relates to the Immodesties they are obliged to suffer on stage; as Shakespeare in Love<\/strong> taught us all so well, pre-Restoration these were considered so severe that women were not allowed on stage at all.<\/p>\n

\"Frontispiece<\/a>

Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies<\/p><\/div>\n

This exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery looks at the moment immediately after Charles II reversed this rule, and it\u2019s a fun little look at some portraits, caricatures and paraphernalia of women who were<\/em> allowed on stage, \u2018from Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons\u2019. It\u2019s focused on portraits, but there are some super little earthenware tiles with different actresses on them in Room 3. There\u2019s also a facsimile of the Yellow Pages-style brothel directory, Harris\u2019 List of Covent Garden Ladies; or, The Man of Pleasure\u2019s Kalendar<\/strong>, illustrating the fall from grace of the once \u2018Convent and Garden\u2019 of Westminster Abbey \u2013 a bit too close to eighteenth-century Theatreland for PR-comfort. Since its reissue by the History Press<\/a> this book has now achieved some cult status \u2013 the guy next to me, looking at it, said to his companion, \u2018You know, Gladys: Harris\u2019 List \u2013 that\u2019s the one we\u2019ve got in the toilet\u2019.<\/p>\n

Nell<\/a> (c.1651-87) opens this exhibition \u2013 a talented comic actress, although she is popularly most recognised for inspiring Charles II\u2019s last words \u2018Let not poor Nelly starve\u2019 (she survived him by barely a year, fact fans). There are two portraits of her here, in both of which she\u2019s got her mammaries out. This exhibition would have these as evidence of her \u2018skillful manipulation\u2019 rather than \u2018brazen hussydom\u2019; the second portrait shows her naked to the waist<\/a> and looking directly at the viewer with a gaze at once languid and challenging. You might be reminded of Manet\u2019s Olympia<\/strong><\/a>, condemned as \u2018vulgar\u2019 and \u2018immoral\u2019 on its first exhibition at 1863, mainly because the nude is looking directly at the viewer rather than obligingly turning her head away for better ogling comfort. And indeed, such a tension between looking and being looked at probably underscored a lot of the moral uncertainty about the early actresses.<\/p>\n

Later on, we get Sarah Siddons<\/a> (1755-1831), powerful, tragic grande dame<\/em>. She appears in Room 3 painted by Thomas Lawrence as public intellectual, tutor to the royal children \u2013 and at a vantage point that forces us to look up at her imperious face, rather than to avert our eyes from her naked bosom. This is hung alongside a number of grandiose actress-as-Muse paintings, large as their themes, and also including Muses of Comedy and society amateurs like Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire.<\/p>\n

But even in the late eighteenth century \u2018actress\u2019 still wasn\u2019t a career you\u2019d want for your wife. Thespiennes like Elizabeth Ann Sheridan<\/a> (1754-1792) and Elizabeth Farren<\/a> (1759-1829) \u2013 both exhibited here \u2013 gave up their acting careers, on request, upon marriage. While the eighteenth-century gentleman was not renowned for being into female careers in general, the issue here seems to be more \u2018other men looking at your wife\u2019 than anything else: after all, these men were \u2018forward thinking\u2019 enough to marry an actress in the first place. Perhaps they were nervous of the number of early actresses, like Nell, who had affairs with kings and nobles. If so, they had a good few hundred years of uncertainty left: Edward VII was still pretty into actresses at the turn of the twentieth century. \u2018I\u2019ve spent enough on you to build a battleship\u2019 he complained to Lillie Langtry<\/a> (1853-1929), eliciting the tart response \u2018And you\u2019ve spent enough in me to float one.\u2019 (It may have been such impertinence that led to her replacement by another actress, Sarah Bernhardt<\/a>, shortly afterwards.)<\/p>\n

\"Dorothy<\/a>

Dorothy Jordan in travesti - engraving after the John Hoppner painting in this exhibition<\/p><\/div>\n

But, as this exhibition shows, one of the primary moral gripes with these early actresses was actually about something a bit unexpected: the travesti<\/em><\/a> roles many of them built careers on. There are some fascinating visual representations in this exhibition of actresses \u2013 like Dorothy Jordan (1761-1816), whose bosom apparently \u2018concealed everything but its own charms\u2019 \u2013 in their famous \u2018breech\u2019 roles, both Shakespearean (stalwarts like Twelfth Night<\/strong> and As You Like It<\/strong>) and just\u2026 male (Tom Thumb). It seems that, after decades of young boys aping womanhood, the first actresses set themselves the challenge of continuing the noble tradition: it was conscious decision, rather than occasional dramatic necessity, for many of them to adopt the travesti<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The Immodesty here implied resulted in endless caricatures, many of which are exhibited here. My favourite was entitled \u2018An Actress at her Toilet; or, Miss Brazen Just Breecht\u2019<\/a> \u2013 though perhaps even stranger were the portraits of various male actors, including David Garrick, in drag \u2013 enormous hoop and all \u2013 as a kind of forerunner to the pantomime dame.<\/p>\n

Take a feminist friend and thrash it out in the Portrait Gallery caf\u00e9 with their superior yoghurt and granola, says this reviewer. And visit John Donne on the top floor, if he\u2019s not gone into cleaning yet.<\/p>\n