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artist or maker

Reynolds, Joshua (b.1723, d.1792)

Date

1764-1768

1772-1773 {hair and dress repainted}

dated by Reynolds's sitters' book; partially repainted in 1772-73

Place of production

London, England, United Kingdom

Medium

oil on canvas

Type of object

paintings

Accession number

2304

Full-length oil portrait of Mrs Abington, Frances Barton, dressed in classical costume as Thalia, the Comic Muse. Frances leans on a statue's pedestal draped in red velvet with her left arm. She holds a mask in her right hand. Her left leg is crossed over her right, making a contrapposto pose. Her head leans to the left, she looks at the viewer with a slight smile. She wears a white flowered low-cut dress with a pink sash. Her hair is in a high style. The statue is of a classically-draped figure, the Comic Muse; the head and chest are not visible. The pedestal is decorated with two masks surrounded by oak leaves. An open music book and piece of paper rest against the figure's feet. Trees appear in the background.

Joshua Reynolds painted several portraits of Frances Abington, one of the most celebrated actresses on the Georgian stage. Reynolds’s paintings - and prints after them - played an important role in the cultivation of her public image. Here she is depicted in the guise of Thalia, the Ancient Greek Muse of Comedy, presented as the flesh and blood counterpart of the stone statue of the muse, against whose plinth she leans. The actress holds the mask of Comedy in her right hand and gazes boldly out at the viewer. In performance, she appeared for the first time as The Comic Muse in David Garrick’s Shakespeare Jubilee Pageant at Drury Lane in October 1769. The playwright Hugh Kelly described her as Thalia’s ‘first priestess.’

Commentary

Abington was a highly visible leader of London fashion and it is not surprising that the portrait went back to Reynolds a few years after it was painted so that the dress and hairstyle could be updated. The sprigs on the dress were made less pronounced, creating drapery in line with the more classicising styles of the early 1770s, and the hair was restyled.

Frances Abington (née Burton) was the daughter of a London cobbler. She began acting in 1755. She married James Abington (d. 1806) the King's Trumpeter, and her music teacher, sometime in 1758. After a disagreement with the Drury Lane Theatre, they went to Dublin where she gained great success. Here, she had an affair with the Irish MP, Mr Needham. She separated from James in 1762 and gave him a pension on condition that he never came near her. She returned to England in 1765, and was left money when Mr Needham died soon after. She was invited back to London by David Garrick and over the next 17 seasons became a leading actress, specialising in comedies. The part of Lady Teazle in Sheridan’s “The School for Scandal” (1777) was written for her. One of her obituarists wrote: 'for a long series of years she was the unrivalled female ornament of the British stage in Comedy, and in the general range of sprightly characters, particularly in the higher walks of fashionable life'.

In his arrangement of the Grey Drawing Room, where this painting hangs, Ferdinand de Rothschild created a gallery of Reynolds ‘beauties,’ in which the visual similarities between Mrs Abington and Anne, Duchess of Cumberland (acc. no. 2303) – their clothes, hairstyles and settings with stone and red drapery - encourage comparison.

Juliet Carey and Phillippa Plock 2016

Physical description

Dimensions (mm) / weight (mg)

2381 x 1492

Signature & date

not signed or dated

Marks

PC
Stamp
on verso, on 6 metal straps holding the frame

Inscriptions

9534
Inscription
verso, on right side of frame, pencil

9534
Inscription
verso, lower section of frame, pencil

Labels

1934 / Sir J. A. / Mrs Abington as the Comic Muse / J A E. de Rothschild, Esq MP / Waddesdon Manot, Aylesbury / B
Label
on verso, Royal Academy label

M[?]a England / 5
Label
on verso, left stretcher, blue label

History

Provenance

Probably purchased from the artist by the sitter Mrs Fanny Abington (b.Circa 1737, d.1815); acquired by the 3rd Duke John Sackville of Dorset (b.1745, d.1799) before 1813; inherited by his wife Duchess Arabella Cope Sackville of Dorset (b.1769, d.1825); by descent to her daughter Countess Mary Sackville Amherst (b.1792, d.1864); inherited by her sister Countess Elizabeth Sackville De La Warr (b.1795, d.1870); by descent to her son 1st Baron Mortimer Sackville-West Sackville (b.1820, d.1888); inherited by his brother 2nd Baron Lionel Sackville-West Sackville (b.1827, d.1908); sold by 2nd Baron Sackville to Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild (b.1839, d.1898) privately in the 1890s; inherited by his sister Alice de Rothschild (b.1847, d.1922); inherited by her great-nephew James de Rothschild (b.1878, d.1957); bequeathed to Waddesdon (National Trust) in 1957.

Exhibition history

British Institute Exhibition, 1817, London, no. 151 lent by Duchess of Dorset
British Institute Exhibition, 1846, London, no. 35 lent by Earl of Amherst
National Portraits, 1867, South Kensington, no. 604, lent by Countess De La Warr
Royal Academy Exhibition, 1873, London, no. 3 lent by Lord Buckhurst (1st Baron Sackville)
Royal Academy Exhibition, 1934, London, no. 350, lent by James de Rothschild, Memorial Catalogue no. 134

Collection

Waddesdon (National Trust)
Bequest of James de Rothschild, 1957

Bibliography

John Neale; Views of the seats of noblemen and gentlemen, in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland; London; Sherwood, Neely, and Jones; 1818-1823; vol. 1, n.p.; at Knole.
James Northcote; The Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds; 2 vols; London; Henry Colburn Publishers; 1819; vol. 1, p. 127.
Gustav Friedrich Waagen; Galleries and cabinets of art (a supplemental volume to The Treasures of Art in Great Britain); London; John Murray; 1857; pp. 340-41.
C R Leslie, T. Taylor; The Life and Times of Sir Joshua Reynolds; 2 vols; London; John Murray; 1865; vol. 1, pp. 226-27.
Algernon Graves, William Vine Cronin; A History of the Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds; 4 vols; London; Henry Graves; 1899-1901; vol. 1, pp. 2-5.
Ellis Waterhouse; Reynolds; London; Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd.,; 1941; p. 54.
♦; Sir Francis Watson, The Art Collections at Waddesdon Manor I: The Paintings, Apollo, 69, June 1959, 172-182; p. 175, fig. 8.
Ellis Waterhouse, The English Pictures at Waddesdon Manor, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 54, August 1959, 49-56; p. 55.
Ellis Waterhouse, Anthony Blunt; Paintings: The James A. de Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor; Fribourg; Office du Livre, The National Trust; 1967; pp. 67-68, ill.
Malcolm Cormack, The Ledgers of Sir Joshua Reynolds, The Walpole Society, 42, 1968-1970, 105-69; pp. 107, 110.
Aileen Ribeiro; The Dress Worn at Masquerades in England 1730 to 1790; New York; Garland; 1984; fig. 36.
Nicholas Penny; Reynolds; Royal Academy of Arts, London, 16 January - 31 March 1986; London; Royal Academy of Arts; 1986; p. 247.
Andrew Wilton; The Swagger Portrait: Grand Manner Portraiture in Britain From Van Dyck to Augustus John; Tate Gallery, London, 14 October 1992 - 10 January 1993; London; The Tate Gallery Publications; 1992; p. 128.
Martin Postle, Reynolds's Portraits at Waddesdon Manor: Painting for Posterity, Apollo, 139, 1994, 19-33; p. 22, fig. 3.
Martin Postle; Joshua Reynolds: The Subject Pictures; Cambridge; Cambridge University Press; 1995; p. 342.
Maria Ines Aliverti; La Naissance de L'Acteur Moderne; Paris; Éditions Gallimard; 1998; p. 24, fig. 32.
Angela Smallwood; Women and the Theatre; Vivien Jones, Women and Literature in Britain, 1700-1800, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000; 238-262; p. 247, fig. 4.
David Mannings, Martin Postle; Sir Joshua Reynolds: a Complete Catalogue of his Paintings; 2 vols; London; Yale University Press; 2000; p. 55.
Robyn Asleson; Notorious Muse: The Actress in British Art and Culture 1776-1812; London; Yale University Press; 2003; p. viii, fig. I.
Mark Hallett; Joshua Reynolds: Portraiture in Action; New Haven; Yale University Press; 2014; p. 400, fig. 383.
Lucy Davis, Mark Hallett; Sir Joshua Reynolds: Experiments in Paint; The Wallace Collection, London (12 March - 7 June 2015); London; Wallace Collection, Paul Holberton Publishing; 2015; p. 74, fig. 49.

Other details

Subject person

Mrs Fanny Abington, Sitter

Indexed terms

Person as Subject

Abington, Mrs Fanny (b.c 1737, d.1815)

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