Women's Studies Group 1558 – 1837

The Art of the Actress: Fashioning Identities. By Laura Engel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2024. Pp 78. £17.00 paperback), ISBN 9781108977906.

The cover image of Laura Engel’s The Art of the Actress is not of an eighteenth-century actress, but instead features the moody tones of Donato Creti’s Astronomical Observations: Comet (1711). Although not discussed within the book – indeed, Engel may not have chosen the image – the significance is clear. Set against darkening skies, the glowing comet shines out much like the actresses discussed in the text; their dazzling images and performances are moments in history that artists and actress-artists alike attempted to capture in solid form for posterity. In this book, Engel offers the reader a visually and intellectually stimulating insight into the literary, cultural and material legacy of the actress. The Art of the Actress is part of Cambridge Elements: an extensive collection of shorter academic works covering a wide range of disciplines. Engel’s work is published within the Eighteenth-Century Connections series that explores ‘connections between verbal and visual texts and the people, networks, cultures and places’ with attention to ‘oral, written and visual media’. Cambridge Elements can be purchased as affordable print or electronic editions, and some are also open access.

The paperback version of Engel’s book is about the size of a journal but lighter and softer to handle, and the cover image is beautifully reproduced. The text is divided into four parts: part one concentrates on the use of pearls in portraiture; part two is on the relationship between artist and actress; part three focuses on another material object – a muff; and part four cleverly reads the style of ‘unfinished’ art against the in/ability to capture the actress’s image. Engel effectively selects specific material objects and specific actresses to provide ‘a visual exhibition highlighting the representations, creative works, collaborations, and experiences of both well-established and lesser-known performers’ (3) in the eighteenth century. In Engel’s terms, ‘The “art” of the actress thus refers to the actress represented in art, as well as the actress’s labor and skill in making art ephemerally through performance and tangibly through objects’ (2). Throughout the study, Engel highlights the fascinating web of theatrical connections between artists and actresses, demonstrating how ‘women fashioned their identities on- and offstage, as well as how audiences perceived women in the public sphere through theatrical lenses’ (3–4).

Part one immediately establishes Engel’s aims using a piece of jewellery to observe the complex history it brings to different visual portrayals. A string of pearls can tell a story about the actress and her infiltration into the higher echelons of society, but it also conveys the pearls’ murky history in terms of slavery; furthermore, ideas about beauty and competing metaphors of virginity and sexuality show the actress’s ‘[occupation of a] precarious and significant place in the early modern world’ (18). The section concludes with a concise but fascinating examination of pearls as stage accessory in portraits of actresses, providing links between the parts they and others played.

Part two develops the concept of the actress as artist/artist as actress. With a focus on Anne Damer (amateur actress and sculptor) and Angelica Kauffman (artist), Engel demonstrates how involvement in acting had an impact on their representations of women. Engel provides an expansive backstory to a selection of portraits showing how Damer and Kauffman’s private and public lives, as well as public theatre and private theatricals – and even specific performances, costumes and contemporary fashions – fed into their artistic creations. Damer, present in the public eye as an actress, sculptor, and quite a character with her ‘dazzling, over-the-top costumes’ (38), was inevitably subject to satiric attacks. Engel provides an empowering reading of the ongoing presence of these women’s work in museums and galleries as testimony to their valuable contributions to the arts.

The penultimate section focusses on one figure and an emblematic object: Mary Anne Clarke and her strategically held muff. Clarke appeared with a huge white muff at the scandalous court case concerning her selling of army commissions to fund decoration of the house given to her by her lover, the Duke of York. Taking theory and knowledge of actresses’ self-fashioning and their contemporary reception and portrayal, Engel reads the subsequent images of Clarke in comparable ways: ‘Although Clarke was not an actress on the stage, her theatrical maneuvering and publicity stunts established her as a performer to be reckoned with’ (48). The validity of this approach is reinforced by the section on Thomas Rowlandson’s collection of prints featuring Clarke and actress Dorothy Jordan, in which Engel persuasively highlights connections between the satirical portrayals of the two women. Engel concludes with a more uplifting comment on Clarke’s later attempt to control her image through neo-classical sculpture.

To conclude, Engel effectively examines the transitory nature of performance by turning to ‘unfinished’ artwork. Engel uses a selection of Sir Thomas Lawrence’s unfinished portraits to show how they ‘are inextricably tied to the theater, an art form that is by definition fleeting, ephemeral, and open-ended’ (63). Again, Engel reveals the intricate web of theatrical connections behind and feeding into artistic works. The unfinished portraits are of the actress and playwright Elizabeth Inchbald, and of Lady Cahir who performed with Lawrence in one of Inchbald’s plays at a private theatrical. Engel extends the reading of theatrical influences on portraiture to a brief analysis of other portraits. One is ‘almost too finished’ (68) compared to the others: ‘these portraits are alive because they are not done yet’ (65).

One lasting impression this condensed book gives is just how theatrically infused culture was in the eighteenth century. Because of the impressive scope of Engel’s work in exploring the connections and conversations between artists and actresses, visual art, performances and more, there is less space at times to delve into detailed analysis and deepening of concepts, such as how the eighteenth-century actress ‘is central to understanding unfolding anxieties about nation, race, gender and heteronormativity’ (4). For example, the ‘unexpected analogy’ between an enslaved (female) child and duchess (in Duchess of Portsmouth with an Unknown Female Attendant) could be developed further using broader post-colonial studies, particularly in relation to the subsequent portrait of Nell Gwyn (with black male slave) which Engel presents as an echo (17). Sometimes the cruder, more explicit aspects of the material are left unsaid: for example, we can consider exactly how Gwyn is (erotically) ‘making’ (or stuffing or washing?) sausages and how Clarke’s muff (like Sophia Western’s in Tom Jones)is representative of female genitalia. These kinds of questions, however, also point to the effectiveness of Engel’s style, which encourages an interactive engagement. Engel often poses questions or makes references to online reproductions of portraits for readers to follow up in addition to the extensive range she discusses. I found myself setting up another device to look at these images while reading this book. I can imagine students and scholars alike being inspired to pursue new research projects. As a kind of condensed monograph, in an age when time seems to be as short as ever and new research is published rapidly, this easy-to-read book serves as a model and inspiration for future study.

Victoria Joule is an independent scholar based in Wales. Victoria has published on women’s writing of the long eighteenth century with particular attention to self-representation and literary forms. She co-edited and contributed to the essay collection with Emrys D. Jones, Intimacy and Celebrity in Eighteenth-Century Literary Culture: Public Interiors (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).