03 works, PORTRAIT OF A LADY, Thomas Beach's Portraits of Mrs. Siddons, with Footnotes #229

Thomas Beach, R.A.

Portrait of Mrs. Siddons in the character of Melancholy from Milton's 'Il Penseroso'

Oil on canvas, in a carved and gilt wood Kentian frame

126.8 x 90.1 cm.; 49⅞ x 35½ in.

Private collection

Sold for 15,120 GBP in July 2022

Sarah Siddons was a Welsh actress, the best-known tragedienne of the 18th century. Contemporaneous critic William Hazlitt dubbed Siddons as "tragedy personified".

She was most famous for her portrayal of the Shakespearean character, Lady Macbeth, a character she made her own, as well as for fainting at the sight of the Elgin Marbles in London.

The Sarah Siddons Society, founded in 1952, continues to present the Sarah Siddons Award annually in Chicago to a distinguished actress. More on Sarah Siddons

Paintings: G0390

Sarah Siddons and John Phillip Kemble, in "Macbeth", c. 1986

Oil on canvas

Height: 179cm, Width: 152.4cm

Garrick Club, London

The moment shown is Act II, scene 2. Siddons as Lady Macbeth wears the elaborate powdered coiffure of c.1780 with a broad-brimmed circular hat on the back of her head. Her dress, however, is the Van Dyk style, dark green, the bodice trimmed with sequins, and the overskirt hemmed with a zigzag pattern. The sleeves of her white chemise are visible, tied with pale blue ribbons at the elbows, and she has a wide lace collar. Kemble as Macbeth wears a late-18th-century red coat, with green lapels, and a plaid across his chest and over his shoulders. Moonlight streams through a Gothic window behind the pair. More on this painting

Thomas Beach  (1738–1806)

Portrait of Sarah Siddons, c. 1782

Oil on canvas Edit this at Wikidata

height: 74.3 cm (29.2 in); width: 61.6 cm (24.2 in)

Auckland Art Gallery

Thomas Beach (1738 – 17 December 1806) was a British portraitist who studied under Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Beach was born at Milton Abbas, Dorset in 1738, and showed. a strong predilection for art from an early age. In 1760, under the patronage of Lord Dorchester's family, he became a pupil of Sir Joshua Reynolds, while at the same time studying at the St. Martin's Lane Academy. He then settled at the fashionable resort of Bath, where he was much in demand for his portraits and portrait groups, which were usually of a small size.

He painted the actress Sarah Siddons several times. In his first portrait of her, painted in the winter of 1781–2, she is shown seated, in everyday clothes, holding a book. He depicted her again later in 1782, in one of his more ambitious works, an allegorical portrait inspired by Milton's Il Penseroso, in which she represented the personification of Melancholy. In 1787 he painted Mrs. Siddons and John Kemble in the Dagger Scene in Macbeth, of which the actress wrote, "My brother's head is the finest I have ever seen, and the likest of the two".

He was a member of the Incorporated Society of Artists, and a contributor to its exhibitions from 1772 to 1783. He exhibited the Royal Academy every year from 1785 until 1790, but not again until 1797, when he was living at Strand-on-the-Green, near Kew in London, and sent a portrait of the Prince of Wales. Several of Beach's portraits were engraved in mezzotint by William Dickinson, Valentine Green, Richard Houston, and John Jones.

Beach died at Dorchester, Dorset, on 17 December 1806. More on Thomas Beach

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