Three Great Actresses in Art
Portraits of Sarah Bernhardt, Eleonora Duse and Ellen Terry
© Meg Nola
Apr 14, 2009
Artists have often been compelled to recreate the visual intensity of an actress, with such portraits being of particular significance in the years before the advanced use of photography and movie cameras. During the late 19th through early 20th centuries, dramatic divas Sarah Bernhardt, Eleonora Duse and Ellen Terry were three of the biggest stars on stage, each with a distinct persona and each serving as a muse for painters.
Sarah Bernhardt
Fiery and passionate Sarah Bernhardt was born in Paris in 1844 and trained with the Comédie Française. Her presence was strong, her characters often tragic, and her life beyond the theatre generally as colorful as her acting. Bernhardt had many lovers and captivated such great minds as Sigmund Freud and Oscar Wilde, Wilde writing the play Salome especially in her honor. Bernhardt even insisted on playing Hamlet, clearly refusing to let gender keep her from an epic role.
Bernhardt, who also did some of her own painting and sculpting, was naturally inspiring to numerous artists of her day. Jean-Léon Gérôme, Jules Bastien-Lepage and Manuel Orazi captured the Divine Sarah off-stage, while Alphonse Mucha and Georges Clairin portrayed her in-character glory. She was quite close to painter Louise Abbéma as well, with a possible romantic relationship between the two. Additionally, Andy Warhol’s inclusion of Bernhardt in his "Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century" offered a more modern view of a woman who surely wanted to be regarded as timeless.
Eleonora Duse
Italian-born Eleonora Duse (1858-1924) had an ongoing rivalry with Sarah Bernhardt, the two women often playing some of the same roles yet approaching their craft with different intensities. Beyond the theatre, Duse was more private and introspective than Bernhardt, holding her dramatic power within then projecting it into her performance. This early method acting-like approach brought praise from playwright George Bernard Shaw, who further declared that Duse and not Bernhardt had the superior talent.
Artist John Singer Sargent’s circa 1893 Duse suggests her smoldering depth, much like Ilya Repin’s languid 1891 charcoal portrait shows a kind of quietly leonine aspect. While Duse was less prone to public displays, she was hardly timid or restrained, even going so far as to try to burn down the house of writer Gabriele d’Annunzio at the end of their turbulent love affair.
Ellen Terry
One of England’s premier actresses in the later 19th century was Dame Ellen Terry (1847-1928). Part of a British theatrical dynasty, Terry made her stage debut at the age of nine and married artist George Frederic Watts just before she turned seventeen. Watts was nearly thirty years older than Ellen, and while he was captivated by her lovely appearance, he found her youth and energy too overwhelming. The marriage ended soon after but Watts’ portraits of Ellen endured, including the ethereal Choosing (1864).
Like Duse, Terry was much admired by George Bernard Shaw — and perhaps too obsessively admired by Alice in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll. Her gift for Shakespeare was enhanced by her natural approach to the roles, which gave them a more immediate accessibility.
Terry posed for British painter Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, who also designed Terry's costume for her role of Imogen in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline. Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson’s portrait of Ellen Terry is a beautiful study in black, while John Singer Sargent’s 1889 Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth offers a gorgeously colored, commanding image of an actress at the height of her powers, playing one of the best parts ever written and giving it her all.
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