Mrs Abington (c1737 - 1815) as The Comic Muse

Joshua Reynolds painted several portraits of Frances Abington, one of the most celebrated actresses on the Georgian stage. Reynolds’s paintings - and prints after them - played an important role in the cultivation of her public image. Here she is depicted in the guise of Thalia, the Ancient Greek Muse of Comedy, presented as the flesh and blood counterpart of the stone statue of the muse, against whose plinth she leans. The actress holds the mask of Comedy in her right hand and gazes boldly out at the viewer. In performance, she appeared for the first time as The Comic Muse in David Garrick’s Shakespeare Jubilee Pageant at Drury Lane in October 1769. The playwright Hugh Kelly described her as Thalia’s ‘first priestess.’

1764-1768

Oil on canvas

2381.0 x 1492.0mm

2304