Sarah Siddons (née Kemble)
1 portrait
- Overview
- Extended Catalogue Entry
© National Portrait Gallery, London
Sarah Siddons (née Kemble)
by Gilbert Stuart
oil on canvas, 1787
29 1/2 in. x 24 1/2 in. (749 mm x 622 mm)
Given by John Thadeus Delane, 1858
Primary Collection
NPG 50
Sitterback to top
- Sarah Siddons (née Kemble) (1755-1831), Actress. Sitter associated with 40 portraits, Artist or producer associated with 1 portrait.
Artistback to top
- Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828), Painter. Artist or producer associated with 61 portraits.
This portraitback to top
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'.
Linked publicationsback to top
- Smartify image discovery app
- Gibson, Robin, Treasures from the National Portrait Gallery, 1996
- Ingamells, John, National Portrait Gallery: Mid-Georgian Portraits 1760-1790, 2004, p. 430
- Ross, Josephine, Jane Austen and her World, 2017, p. 93
- Saywell, David; Simon, Jacob, Complete Illustrated Catalogue, 2004, p. 564
Events of 1787back to top
Current affairs
Social reformers Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson found the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade in London with support from John Wesley, Josiah Wedgwood and others.George III shows first signs of mental instability in November.
Art and science
Painter Robert Barker takes out a patent on the Panorama..Astronomer William Herschel discovers the two moons of Uranus, Titania and Oberon.
The original Lord's Cricket Ground holds its first cricket match.
International
Captain William Bligh sets sail for Tahiti on The Bounty.First performance of composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Don Giovanni at the National Theatre, Prague.
A British ship lands a party of freed slaves as the first modern settlers in Sierra Leone.
Captain Arthur Phillip leaves Portsmouth with eleven ships full of convicts to establish a penal colony in Australia.
Bahamas become a British colony.
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