Lot 142: A PLASTER SELF-PORTRAIT BUST OF SARAH SIDDONS

BY SARAH SIDDONS (1755-1831), EARLY 19TH CENTURY
Depicted facing frontally and wearing a headscarf; signed to the truncation of the proper left shoulder 'S. SIDDONS. FECIT'; on an integral circular socle; the surface painted with grey paint
21 3/4 in. (55.2 cm.) high, overall

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE:
P. Noble, Anne Seymour Damer, Woman of Art and Fashion, London, 1908, pp. 164-5.
R. Asleson ed., A Passion for Performance, Sarah Siddons and her Portraitists, Los Angeles, 1999, p. 67.
D. Bilbey and M. Trusted, British Sculpture 1470-2000, London, 2002, pp. 358-9, no. 533.

ANOTHER PROPERTY

Born Sarah Kemble in Brecon, Wales, she was the eldest daughter of Roger Kemble, an actor-manager whose travelling company included most of the members of his family. Like her three brothers Charles, John and Stephen, Sarah was also drawn into acting, and by the age of 20 married the actor William Siddons and made her debut as Portia in David Garrick's production of The Merchant of Venice. Her performance was universally criticised and her contract was not renewed at the end of her first season. She spent the following six years working in provincial theatres and eventually returned to Drury Lane in the title role of Garrick's adaptation of a play by Thomas Southerne, Isabella, or, The Fatal Marriage. She was an immediate sensation and it represented the beginning of twenty years in which she was the undisputed queen of Drury Lane.

Having been disappointed by her portraits painted by artistic titans such as Gainsborough, Reynolds and Stuart, Siddons took to sculpture in 1789 certain that she would be able to produce better portraits of herself. She befriended the sculptress, Anne Seymour Damer, another unconventional and highly dynamic woman of the time and learned the art of modelling. Noble (loc. cit.) records that Siddons 'owed much to Mrs Damer, in whose studio she, with other fair dames arrayed in mob-caps and aprons, wielded the mallet and chisel, kneading wax and clay with their white hands.'

In looking at Siddons' painted portraits it is very clear that the bust offered here is a self-portrait. With its rigid frontal pose and idealised features it is in keeping with Asleson's observation that Siddons deliberately represented herself in an idealised way so that she maintained the canons of classical art (loc. cit.). And since it is not quite as accomplished as her formidable self-portrait plaster bust in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (Bilbey and Trusted, loc. cit.) it seems likely that this bust was executed at a very early stage in her fledgeling career.

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