Sarah Siddons as the Tragic Muse Sarah Siddons as the Tragic Muse Sarah Siddons as the Tragic Muse is a 1784 oil painting by Joshua Reynolds. Mrs. Sarah Siddons: Sarah Siddons was a well-known actress of the 18th century who became famous for her role as Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth. Born Sarah Kemble, aged 18 she married William Siddons, also an actor, and they had seven children of who only two survived. Sarah's parents sent her to work as a lady's maid and with this job she was exposed to the works of England's literary greats such as Milton and Shakespeare. She also began acting and had
Sarah Siddons and by the mid-1780s Siddons had established herself as a cultural icon. Yet her iconography and the fashioning of her celebrity differed greatly in comparison to her female counterparts. Siddons, according to Laura Engel, invented a new category of femininity for actresses: the "Female Star". By "cleverly blurring the distinction between the characters she played on stage with representations of herself offstage (as much portraiture of the period invokes)" Siddons was able to present a duality to her admirers. At once she would project both the "divine and the ordinary, domestic and authoritative, fantastic and real". In combining her maternal