A new show examines the mutual benefits gained by actresses and artists, says Richard Dorment .

Whenever the Victorian painter George Frederick Watts was asked about his brief marriage at the age of 46 to the 17-year-old Ellen Terry, he explained that he had acted from the highest motive – to protect an innocent young girl from embarking on a theatrical career. A sub-plot of Henry James’s novel The Tragic Muse revolves around the dilemma of a young diplomat whose not-particularly- elevated social position prevents him from marrying the beautiful and talented actress with whom he is passionately in love.

As both these examples from the late 19th century show, the absurd prejudice against women performing on the stage has been surprisingly persistent. The National Portrait Gallery’s The First Actresses tries to understand the phenomenon by looking at the careers of the pioneering ladies who – through beauty, talent, intelligence and force of personality – rose to the top of the acting profession from the Restoration to the Regency periods.

This is a complex subject that the exhibition organiser, Gill Perry, does not try to simplify. Some actresses – the Restoration wanton Nell Gwyn or the Italian dancer Giovanna Baccelli – moved from one royal or aristocratic protector to another. But others, like Eva-Maria Garrick and Eliza Sheridan, married for love and then promptly retired from the stage.

The story begins with Nell, the good-natured, fly-by-night floozy whose career set the template for all who came after her. Born into poverty, she wasn’t really pretty – but she was sexy, fun, and amused Charles II. Like a court jester, she could say what only the King’s most intimate friends dared, as in her famous wisecrack – aimed at the Catholic Duchess of Portsmouth – that she, Nell, was “the King’s Protestant whore”.

We will never know what these women were really like, but the remark suggests Nell’s talent for bawdy repartee made her charm irresistible. And look where that charm got her – and quite a few of her theatrical sisters. Debrett’s is full of distinguished families whose great-great-grannies trod the boards.
By Richard Dorment

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