Joshua Reynolds & John Hoppner: Anna Tollemache & Dora Jordan Love Lost & Found in Georgian England

Oh mistress mine, where are you roaming? Oh stay and hear your love's coming. Hello everyone, welcome to Love Lost and Love Found in Georgian England. Anna Ptolemy as Miranda and Dora Jordan as Viola. We're very different from the Georgians in many profound ways, in our wealth, in our knowledge, and particularly at the moment, our social and cultural attitudes. But I believe we can find common ground with them in the field of human relationships, fields of love and sex, which is why I've called this talk Love Lost and Love Found in Georgian England. We're going to look today at two very different paintings of Georgian women in the guise of Shakespearean characters. Anna Ptolemy as Miranda, Dora Jordan as Viola. I'll start briefly with the Dora Jordan portrait. It's by John Hopner. It was painted in 1785 but it was substantially reworked in the early 1790s and we'll be talking about this substantial reworking in the course of the talk. The Hopner portrait wasn't a commission and it is likely it remained in his studio until his death. So if it wasn't a commission why did he paint it? Well I think there were probably two reasons. Firstly he was a friend, a genuine friend of Dora Jordan and he simply liked the woman. But probably more important from a commercial point of view he needed portraits in his studio to show to potential clients the sort of quality of work that he could achieve. Anna Ptolemy in contrast as Miranda was painted in 1774 and it was a commissioned wedding portrait commissioned by her, the man she'd recently married, Wilbraham Ptolemais. And in the Anna Ptolemais picture we see Reynolds painting in his grand manner and he's combining the practice of history painting with its high moral purpose of education through reference to the bible or classics or history or literature. He's combining that with portraiture which paid the rent and paid extremely well in his case. Now Anna's husband Wilbraham also commissioned Reynolds to paint his sister Louisa. So Louisa was Anna's sister-in-law and this portrait is also at Kenwood. And I just want to, before we move on, I just want to compare these two pictures because they're very interesting and they're hung at opposite ends of the the music room so they're not that easy to compare in real life. But one of the things I want to point out about the Louisa picture is that although the Louisa Manor's picture is a commissioned portrait and she's not portrayed as anything other than herself, nonetheless Reynolds is introducing at least one element of his grand his grand manner into the picture in that he's painting her in this classically simple gown. And one of the things I discovered, at least I think I discovered quite recently, was I'm pretty sure that the gown in the Louisa Manor's portrait is the same gown albeit differently accessorized as is in her sister-in-law's portrait, the Anna portrait. So an interesting point that Reynolds was very very keen on his grand manner and would introduce it at every opportunity that that he had. So moving on to the portrait of Anna, Anatole Machaz Miranda. To understand why this wedding portrait was painted as a Shakespeare scene we need to understand exactly what is happening. The scene is from Act One of Shakespeare's The Tempest and there are four figures in the scene, though only three on the canvas. The first of those figures is Miranda herself. Now in the play Tempest, Miranda is 15 years old. She's the daughter of Prospero, the powerful wizard, the powerful magician, and she's living at this time on the magic island with the father. And it was to this island that her father had been exiled there some dozen years before. Her father has caused a storm which has shipwrecked his old enemies who sent him into exile and Miranda has just seen the son of one of those enemies struggling out of the sea and she is saying what is it, a spirit? Her father explains who this person is and Miranda responds, I might call him a thing divine for nothing natural I ever saw so noble. The second figure in the picture is her father and he's hidden away in the trees and it's quite difficult to see in the original but here in this rather brightened version he stands out and you can see that he is not a happy man. He's holding in his hand the magic staff and he's looking pretty furious and of course the reason he's looking so angry is because the last thing in the world he wants at this stage is for his daughter to start falling in love with the son of one of his enemies that he's compelled to come to the island. The third figure in the picture is Caliban and he's interestingly portrayed as a figure of the earth. He's literally half in and half out of the ground. Caliban is the misshapen son of a witch and at the moment at this point of the narrative he's Prospero's wood gatherer. You can see the staves of wood in his hands and he was originally enslaved when he tried to rape Miranda. Now there's been much discussion amongst Shakespeare scholars over Caliban and what his significance is including interestingly whether he represents some form of criticism of new world colonialism. Now before we move on to the fourth figure in the scene who's not actually represented in the picture just want to point out this final feature which is the small image of a wrecked ship in the background and I think the reason why Reynolds has included this small image is so that viewers are in no doubt about the precise literary context of the painting. So this is this puts the scene exactly the act one scene two at the time of the shipwreck so people who generally would have think would have known the story can be in no doubt about what is going on. So what about this fourth figure? What does this scene look like when that fourth figure is portrayed? Well to show you this I'm going to look at a painting of the same scene by William Hogarth. Now Hogarth painted this picture 1736 around 40 years before the Reynolds portrait. Clearly this is not a portrait it's illustrative and it's decorative and interestingly it's the first painted scene from Shakespeare that has survived. Now Hogarth has painted the scene the opposite way around to the way that Reynolds has portrayed the scene so what I'm going to do is just reverse it for easier comparison. So here you have the fourth figure in the scene not included in Reynolds' portrait who is Ferdinand Prince of Naples as I said before the son of one of the men who sent Prospero into exile and I think looking at the Hogarth picture which I think is interesting and lovely in its own right but I think it makes it clear why Reynolds did not include Ferdinand in his picture. The first reason I think is that if you had if he had included Ferdinand he would have had to have made the picture in a landscape format and he clearly didn't want to do that as it was essentially a portrait. But secondly I think that it simply takes the focus away from Miranda I mean the painting by Reynolds is a portrait of Miranda it's a wedding portrait and he doesn't want the vision the focus diffused across the whole scene so that's why he's chosen to exclude the figure of Ferdinand from his portrait. So back to the portrait itself why have a wedding portrait done in this way? Well as you would expect from Reynolds' painting in the Grand Manor it's a coded message the idea is to tell viewers about the nature of the relationship between the wife and her husband and of course this message is something positive and it's something moral because moral education lies behind the whole of painting in the Grand Manor. So what's the purpose of the scene? Well firstly Anna stroke Miranda is pure and untouched and natural and I think that is the naturalness of the scene is particularly emphasised by the simplicity of a classically inspired gown. Now Miranda has never actually seen a young man before the only man she's seen is her father and she certainly hasn't desired any man and in the Tempest in this narrative the first man that Miranda sees she falls in love with and ultimately very end of the play she she marries him. So Miranda's love for Ferdinand stroke Anna's love for Wilbraham isn't driven by desire for gain or social status but by real heartfelt emotion. In reality Anna who came from you might call the the middle class gentry she's well below her husband Wilbraham in the social hierarchy but Wilbraham's going to become an earl so I think the painting is really driving home the point that their marriage is a true love match and I think there's also a further message about Anna being an educated intelligent woman who's interested in the theatre she's known to have acted in amateur productions there's no evidence that she actually performed the role of Miranda but she was clearly a woman who could read and write and could appreciate literature literature and appreciate drama and I think finally there's something in the picture for Wilbraham himself later Earl of Dysart. Now although Wilbraham is a member of the aristocracy in this scene he's being associated with royalty with a prince so you know he gets a little bit of extra kudos there but I think the most important message about Wilbraham is that it puts across that his love for Anna is a true love and it's not inspired it's not motivated by gain or social status or anything of that sort. So was this a happy marriage? Well the couple had the picture copied five times to give away to friends and family it was copied twice by John Constable and once by John Hopner but the original hung in their main London house in Piccadilly in the entrance hall so that it was the first thing that anybody visiting them in London would see and although they had no children it really does seem to have been a happy and romantic marriage. When Anna died before her husband in 1804 he had this wonderful marble memorial made and this memorial remains in the church their country seat in Suffolk to this day. So a good case I think of love found in Georgian England. Now moving on to the second picture Dora Jordan as Viola in Twelfth Night. Dora's story is reasonably well known I'm sure that all of you will have some degree of knowledge about her history and many of you indeed will have read Clare Tomlin's excellent biography which if by any chance you haven't read I can thoroughly recommend it really is gives you true insight into the latter part of the 18th century as well as describing very beautifully the story of Dora herself. So I'll just summarise the key points which led up to the painting of the picture. Dora was born in 1761 in London and she was born Dorothy Bland but she was raised in Dublin and she followed her mother onto the stage when she was 16. She came to England in 1782 to escape the unwanted attentions of a Dublin theatre manager who had forced himself on her and got her pregnant and in making that move to England she originally came to Yorkshire to the Yorkshire Repertory Theatre scene. She changed her name to Jordan to reflect the crossing of the sea. Her talent was genuine and it was recognised and three years after she came to England in 1785 she was invited by Richard Sheridan to act with his Drury Lane Theatre Company and she had great success on the stage at Drury Lane and she also found domestic happiness when she partnered with Richard Ford who was one of the owners of the theatre and she had three children with him two of whom survived. However that relationship with Richard Ford didn't survive because in 1791 she was offered the position of royal mistress by the third son of George III who was William Duke of Clarence and when I say she was offered the position it was pretty much a business offer it was made in writing and there were all sorts of terms and conditions agreed. So she gave up Richard Ford and she became the long-term partner mistress of William Duke of Clarence and she stayed with him for 20 years and Dora was 30 when they got together and her partner William was five years younger. So the picture that we see today was originally painted in about 1785 but in a very different form as this x-ray shows. Now John Hopner was a leading society portraitist indeed after Reynolds' retirement in 1789 he was the leading portraitist he was the go-to man. He was friends both with William Duke of Clarence who was actually godfather to Hopner's daughter and separately before they got together he was friendly with Dora and he actually painted Dora five times in total. Now it was rumoured that Hopner was the illegitimate son of George III when George was Prince of Wales whether that's true or not nobody knows but certainly Hopner never discouraged this rumour and it probably helped him moving in in the circles royal circles and other high circles that he moved in. So looking at the original picture as painted in 1785 revealed in the x-ray Dora is in the role of Viola the cross-dressing heroine of Twelfth Night but dressed very very differently to the final picture. Now the original costume she was portrayed in was far fancier indeed it was really quite exotic so we have some form of embroidered frock coat there's a broad sash at the waist with tassels and frills maybe she's got a frilly shirt front you can you can see and her chest there but most importantly of all there is an enormous Turkish style turban. Now when I first saw this x-ray I couldn't believe that this was meant to be a man's hat but it is a Turkish turban which you can actually see similar ones portrayed in in other exotic portraits of the time. Most notably of course you have this huge plume at the back here of ostrich feathers. So this is the way it was painted this the way that it looked for it's the first five six seven years of its life but then it was reworked by Hoppner. Julius Bryant believes in 1791 or 1792 but why on earth was it reworked? Well Bryant in the catalogue offers a couple of explanations and the chief of which is that it was to distinguish this picture from another painted by Hoppner himself in 1791 showing Dora in a fancy dress and hat a woman's fancy dress and hat but Bryant also hints at another explanation and this is the one I want to pursue because I think this is the one which actually is the is the correct one. Now to get to the bottom of this explanation we need to understand the public response to Dora becoming the mistress of the Duke of Clarence in 1791. From the beginning of the royal partnership the cartoonists really ripped into the couple for two main reasons. Firstly it's to mock the hypocrisy of the royal family which is something which is still with us today but I think it was also to titillate the public with scenes of salacious sexual shenanigans. The cartoonists were the paparazzi of the time and their crudity really knew few boundaries as you'll see when I complete the picture. Here you have William Duke of Clarence and he's identified because he has got the star of the Order of the Garter on his jacket hanging up there so there can be no mistake who this gentleman is and you can see what he's doing to, as the cartoon says, the cracked Jordan. Now the reason why Dora Jordan is portrayed if you like as a chamberpot is that Jordan, as many of you will know I guess, was the slang term for a chamberpot. Whether she knew this when she adopted the name in 1782 when she came to England we don't know but unfortunately it did lend itself to a whole range of salacious illustrations and this, although it's pretty extreme, is by no means the most extreme of its type. So why did Hopner rework the picture and downplay, make the costume much more austere? Well I think the most credible explanation for the reworking of the painting was that Hopner wanted to set out an image of Dora not as frivolous and exotic but as an actor, as sensitive and artistic and dedicated to the stage but also very importantly someone who was serious and patriotic. Because of course the other big event at this time was the start of the complex series of historical events in France we now call the French Revolution kicking off in 1789 with the Bastille storming. Now in Britain this was welcomed by many at first, particularly the more liberal persuasion, but that feeling began to change as the events in France took darker and darker turns and there was a key turning point in the middle of 1791 when the king fled Paris for Varennes to try to start a counter-revolution. He was arrested and returned to Paris and imprisoned and that then began the series of further trials and events which resulted in his execution. From that point onwards increasingly feeling of Britain turned against revolutionaries and Britain really began to prepare for a war against revolutionary France. So I think the reworking of the picture at this time replacing a very fancy frivolous costume with the austere patriotic military uniform is a response or a corrective to the many salacious cartoons doing the rounds at the time. And the purpose of the reworking would not have been just to have one picture of Dora in the revised style but to have the picture engraved and distributed just as the cartoons were engraved and distributed. However this doesn't appear to have been done in her lifetime there's no known record of an engraving but it was done later in in 1832 and the reason for this was that this year Bowdoin published his Life of Mrs Jordan and this aroused a great deal of interest in in her life and times and warranted the the effort of doing making an engraving and made a market for it for its for its sale. So was there a happy ending? Well I guess as you probably all know regretfully no. The couple did have 10 children all of whom survived but in 1811 William simply dumped Dora. He'd got fed up with her she had reached the end of her child-bearing life which seemed to be a key part of their relationship and he just wanted to move on to other women. He made her an allowance a personal allowance, an allowance for the children. She returned to acting though she was less successful than she had been before and she made the huge personal mistake of guaranteeing the debts of one of her sons-in-law on Frederick March. He hadn't married one of the children with William he was the husband of one of the children she had had with Richard Ford the theatre manager. Now Frederick March was a scoundrel he defaulted on the debts probably never had any intention of repaying him in the first place. Dora became liable she had the choice of death as prison or exile and she chose exile. So shortly after Waterloo in 1815 she went to France and she died just outside Paris Saint-Clude in July 1816. William later married a German princess and in 1827 when his older brother Frederick died he became heir to the throne and as you'll know he succeeded to the throne in 1830 and reigned for for seven years. So we have one love lost and one love found. I just want to finish with a final thought. I think we're really fortunate at Kenwood to have these two paintings which are both appealing portraits attractive lovely women in their own rights but which also reveal to us two very human stories and I think it's these stories which helped us to connect to a time which otherwise might well feel beyond our reach. Thank you very much for listening. and i'll strive to please you every day