Sarah Siddons of feminine propriety. Commissioned and completed in 1784, Sir Joshua Reynolds' portrait, "Sarah Siddons as The Tragic Muse", is characterized by Reynolds' inspiration, contextualisation of the Muse, and distinctive brush work and paint palette. This portrait, as Heather McPherson writes, became the known depiction of tragedy, infused with contemporary ideas about acting and representation of the passions in Siddons' melancholy expression and deportment. Mary Hamilton's correspondence with her fiancé illuminated its seamless transition from "the artist's studio to the theatrical stage", practical venues that interlocked in the eighteenth century and formed a large part in creating the very idea of
Joachim Hayward Stocqueler that he was the illegitimate son of George Siddons, son of Sarah Siddons the actress. Although apparently believed by some of his family, this claim was vehemently disputed by Sarah Siddons’s true great-grand-daughter, the actress Mary Frances Scott-Siddons. Stocqueler married Jane Spencer in Bombay in 1828; their son Edwin Roper Loftus Stocqueler was born in the following year. A second son born in Calcutta died in infancy. Following a long separation from her husband, and time in England, Jane Stocqueler and Edwin departed for the Victorian gold fields in Australia. Edwin, an artist, was present on the Bendigo gold fields