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
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