Sarah Siddons

1. Earlier this semester I went to have a look around the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. Unlike my many previous trips to the museum, the trip I took on September 7th was very different, my friend Griffin and I were on a serious mission. From our favorites we sought out the perfect piece of art to write an essay about. Upon entering the Hall of European Art, I gazed up at one of my favorite paintings in the museum’s permanent collection; A Portrait of Sarah Siddons. During my time in high school, I went to the museum on several occasions, one of which was for an event hosted to help AP art students find the right college. Although I had no intention of attending a university for the pursuit of artistic studies, my visual arts teacher urged me

A simple Google search will turn up page after page of beautiful images of this woman, who is often referred to as the “Tragic Muse”. Sarah Siddons was not simply a muse for William Hamilton himself, though, but anyone who saw her on the stage. She was a famous actress in London during the late 1770s and 1780s that portrayed dramatic roles like Lady Macbeth and Ophelia. Countless times Sarah Siddons was painted, but scrolling through historical paintings, the one here in Oklahoma City seems to stick out. According to a BBC article about Hamilton’s style and prominent works, single person portraits far from his most common focus. Also odd is with the casual and close up nature of Siddons pose, which is atypical of most well known paintings of her. In most paintings Siddons is posed in an alluring and almost angelic, but in this one she is expressive and almost bored looking. Although this is not the only time that Hamilton depicted her, most other pieces are engravings finished by Francesco Bartolozzi showing scenes from Shakespeare’s productions at various London theater houses. Bartolozzi was often inspired by Hamilton’s work and used many of his paintings as basis for stippling style engravings and etchings. In the same way that Bartolozzi was inspired and studied under Hamilton, Hamilton was an apprentice under the Italian artist Antonio