Art and Celebrity in the Age of Reynolds and Siddons by Heather McPherson

His proper left leg is forward with a sword at his side. Dressed in colonial, military costume, he stands with both hands and arms pulled behind its back. Summary A portrait of Kosciuszko standing facing the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. The information provided about this artwork was compiled as part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Inventories of American Painting and Sculpture database, designed to provide descriptive and location information on artworks by American artists in public and private collections worldwide. (Text on proper left side of base plaque, in Polish:) DAR NARODU POLSKIEGO/DLA NARODU/AMERYKAN SKIEGO/UPAMIETNIA JACY 200 LECIE/NIE PODLEGKOSCI AMERYKI signed Founder's mark appears. (On lower left:) MARION KONIESZNY (On back of the base:) WYKONAWCA 6ZVT/6LIWICE/POLAND 1978 (On plaque on front of base:) GENERAL TADEUSZ KOSCIUSZKO (Text on proper right side of base plaque:) HERO OF POLAND AND THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA/FROM THE PEOPLE OF POLAND/TO THE PEOPLE OF/THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA/COMMEMORATING 200 YEARS/OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. Interweaving art history, history of performance, and cultural studies, Art and Celebrity in the Age of Reynolds and Siddons offers important insights into the intersecting worlds of artist and actor, studio and stage, high art and popular visual culture.General Tadeusz Kosciuszko, (sculpture) Geographic Location 40.00762855, -75.13397081 Notes Save Outdoor Sculpture, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Survey, 1993.

These transport the reader to eighteenth-century London and the dynamic venues where art and celebrity converged with culture and commerce. This richly researched study draws on a wide variety of period sources, from newspaper reviews and satirical pamphlets to caricatures and paintings by Reynolds and Lawrence as well as Thomas Gainsborough, George Romney, and Angelica Kauffman. McPherson considers this increasing interest in theatrical and artistic celebrities and explores the ways in which aesthetics, cultural politics, and consumption combined during this period to form a media-driven celebrity culture that is surprisingly similar to celebrity obsessions in the world today.

Likewise, artists such as Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Lawrence figured prominently outside their studios-in polite society and the emerging public sphere. Popular actors in Georgian London, such as David Garrick, Sarah Siddons, and John Philip Kemble, gave larger-than-life performances at Drury Lane and Covent Garden their offstage personalities garnered as much attention through portraits painted by leading artists, sensational stories in the press, and often-vicious caricatures. In this volume, Heather McPherson examines the connections among portraiture, theater, the visual arts, and fame to shed light on the emergence of modern celebrity culture in eighteenth-century England.

Art and Celebrity in the Age of Reynolds and Siddons by Heather McPherson