Art and Celebrity in the Age of Reynolds and Siddons

“[Siddons] was among the first celebrities to emerge from show business with the help of portrait painting. This year, she plays a starring role in [this] handsome book, Art and Celebrity in the Age of Reynolds and Siddons.”

—Robert Fulford National Post

“By skillfully crossing disciplines and emphasizing the correlation between celebrity and fame in late eighteenth-century English society, McPherson provides an admirable scholarly contribution that places the late eighteenth century at the core of a palimpsest that resonates into our own time.”

—Joan Coutu Journal of British Studies

“One of the most important takeaways from this book is the multi-layered meaning of ‘performance,’ allowing readers to think more critically about the construction of identity in public and private life.”

—Amanda Strasik XVIII New Perspectives on the Eighteenth Century

“Heather McPherson undertakes a critical reevaluation of the connection between portraiture and theatrical personalities in eighteenth-century England, successfully revealing a complex multidirectional network of influence. She suggests a direct link between the eighteenth-century cult of celebrity and our own contemporary obsession with images of celebrities—in performative roles; on magazine covers; in reality television; amid scandals and triumphs. Suddenly, the eighteenth century doesn’t seem as distant or alien to this age of digital imagery and instant access, nor do we seem particularly advanced despite our technological advantages.”

—Andrew Graciano, editor of Exhibiting Outside the Academy, Salon, and Biennial, 1775–1999: Alternative Venues for Display

“A smart, satisfying book. Heather McPherson eloquently demonstrates why the cross-pollination of the visual arts and theater resonates far beyond narrow conceptions of the stage or visual histories of particular performers, opening up, instead, valuable avenues for a richer understanding of Georgian exhibition culture as fueled by an ever-shifting, developing public.”

—Craig Ashley Hanson, author of The English Virtuoso: Art, Medicine, and Antiquarianism in the Age of Empiricism

“Heather McPherson provides an ambitious and supple exploration of the complicated relationships between portrait painting and theatrical performance in eighteenth-century London. By juxtaposing paintings by Reynolds, Kauffman, Gainsborough, and Lawrence with contemporary caricatures, theatrical prints, memoirs, and memorabilia, she is able to evoke the origins of artistic celebrity. At the heart of her nuanced and wide-ranging study is the intriguing role of performance within the artist’s studio as well as on the boards of the London stage.”

—Richard Wendorf, director of the American Museum in Britain and author of Sir Joshua Reynolds: The Painter in Society

“In her authoritative and truly interdisciplinary study of art and the stage in eighteenth-century Britain, Heather McPherson makes the gossamer of celebrity as tangible as the painted canvas or the printed page, the passionate gesture or the spectacular tableau, showing how carefully such stars as Garrick, Reynolds, Siddons, and Lawrence worked together to launch our ‘performance-based and image-driven’ culture of publicity.”

—Joseph Roach, author of It and Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance

“Beautifully produced, conscientiously researched, and wide-ranging, Heather McPherson’s book offers a thorough account of eighteenth-century celebrity culture, in which art and theatre are entwined. The book tracks the sometimes uneasy relationships between studio and stage, from the changing conditions of exhibition and spectatorship to portraits, caricatures, performances, and posthumous commemorations. The resulting picture of emerging celebrity culture is packed with pertinent details and astute analysis.”

—Tom Mole, author of Byron's Romantic Celebrity: Industrial Culture and the Hermeneutic of Intimacy

“For those of us who are familiar with Heather McPherson’s scholarship on the inextricable relationship between visual art and the theatre in eighteenth-century England, it is a thrill to see her impressive new volume, a majestically illustrated and beautifully researched analysis of the emergence, growth, and nuances of celebrity culture, particularly in the 1780s.”

—Laura Engel Eighteenth-Century Fiction

“This is a book that provides both an exploration of the mechanisms through which celebrity was created in the eighteenth century and a more theoretical reflection on the notion of celebrity, the kind of reflection that can only come with the sort of deep engagement that McPherson has developed with the topic over many years, the kind of reflection that our age sorely needs.”

—Ersy Contogouris Eighteenth-Century Life