Frances Barton, Mrs Abington (1737-1815) as the Widow Bellmour in Arthur Murphy's 'The Way to Keep Him' (1727-1805)
Johann Zoffany, RA (Frankfurt am Main 1733 - Kew 1810)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
circa 1765
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
991 x 1130 mm (39 x 44 1/2 in)
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Petworth House and Park, West Sussex
NT 486294
Caption
In girlhood, Frances Barton was successively a flower seller, street singer, milliner and cook-maid before making her first appearance on the stage at the Haymarket as Miranda in The Busybody, 1755. She excelled not only in the parts of Shakespeare’s heroines including Portia, Beatrice, Desdemona, Olivia and Ophelia, but also in a great variety of comedy roles. Arthur Murphy’s play, The Way to Keep Him, was first produced at Drury Lane in 1760 (in three acts) and 1761 (in five acts), in both of which Mrs Cibber created the role, and republished in the expanded version in 1786, dedicated to Mrs Abington: ‘You are entitled to it, Madam; for your talents have made the Play your own.’ Both dressing table at the window and Cupid firescreen are very similar to those in prints of paintings of Queen Charlotte and The Royal Princes, of 1764.
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Frances Barton, Mrs Abington (1737-1815) as the Widow Bellmour in Arthur Murphy's 'The Way to Keep Him' (1727-1805) by Johann Zoffany, RA (Frankfurt am Main 1733 - Kew 1810), circa 1765. A full-length portrait of an actress, turned three-quarters to the left, at her dressing table, looking to the right and wearing a black, low-cut bodice, sea-green silk skirt, sewn with gold sprays and an ornament of pearls and leaves in her hair. In her hands she has a fan. To the left is a window and at right a fireplace with a painting of 'Diana and Actaeon' above it.
Provenance
Probably bought by the 3rd Earl of Egremont (1751-1837) from W. Smart in 1823; included in the 1837 inventory of 4 Grosvenor Place, the London house of the 3rd Earl of Egremont; thence by descent, until the death in 1952 of the 3rd Lord Leconfield, who had given Petworth to the National Trust in 1947, and whose nephew and heir, John Wyndham, 6th Lord Leconfield and 1st Lord Egremont (1920-72) arranged for the acceptance of the major portion of the collections at Petworth in lieu of death duties (the first ever such arrangement) in 1956 by H.M.Treasury.
Credit line
Petworth House, The Egremont Collection (acquired in lieu of tax by HM Treasury in 1956 and subsequently transferred to the National Trust)
Makers and roles
Johann Zoffany, RA (Frankfurt am Main 1733 - Kew 1810), artist
Exhibition history
Crown to Couture, Kensington Palace, London, 2023