I just adore this portrait of Elizabeth Farren! As soon as I enter the gallery where she is housed (in the European wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art), I swoon. I hardly notice any other portraits around me. It’s just Elizabeth Farren and I in that room. I’m infatuated. In love.
But what makes this painting so compelling? Is it her smiling Irish eyes? The gossamer white silk satin and cotton muslin of her wardrobe? The languid paint-strokes which make up her body? Perhaps it is a combination of all three. The painting titled Elizabeth Farren, by Sir Thomas Lawrence is a masterful rendition of the popular Irish actress, who ascended the ranks of both English theater and society. But, her climb up the proverbial social ladder was not just blind luck. Hard work and careful management of her image were essential to Elizabeth Farren’s success as an actress and as a wife to the twelfth earl of Derby. Framed within the confines of this portrait are symbolic and cultural messages, which transmit ideas about reputable social standing and the feminine ideal. The portrait of Elizabeth Farren is a careful composition, which was painted in the manner of aristocratic portraiture, and is the result of a collaboration of ideas between Elizabeth Farren and Sir Thomas Lawrence. Far from being a carefree and fanciful painting, Elizabeth Farren is a work of great integrity and intent and would have been highly readable to a contemporary audience.
The painting was shown at the Royal Academy in 1790, where it was well-received and praised for its brilliant technique and composition. The brush strokes are fluid and soft, her body is positioned to face the grasses and trees of the natural background, as if she has suddenly decided to walk in that particular direction, while her head turns back to the viewer, beckoning one to follow her into the painting. Her lustrous white satin cape pops into the space of the viewer, seemingly crossing over from the boundaries of the two-dimensional confines of the painting. Central to the composition of the painting is a rather rotund and richly colored brown fur muff, which is offset by the diaphanous material of the cotton muslin dress which she wears.
The composition in its entirety suggests liveliness and natural spontaneity— artistic marks with which Lawrence was well known, and for which he had no contemporary parallel. When Lawrence painted Elizabeth Farren in the spring of 1790, he was all but twenty-two years old, starting out his career as a child prodigy who would sketch drawings of customers in his father’s hotel, The Black Bear. Just recently departing from pastels to pick up the medium of oil painting, Lawrence’s accomplishments with Elizabeth Farren are impressive. Contemporaries and modern viewers alike can observe in the painting Lawrence’s ability to capture the personality of the sitter, in a way that appears lively. This was achieved by Lawrence’s preliminary sketch techniques, where he spent a few hours studying the natural expressions and gestures of the sitter, drawing with black chalk on canvas. The initial engagement between artist and sitter is preserved in Lawrence’s final painting, therefore making the painting appear more life-like. Contemporaries noted, “We have seen a great variety of pictures of Miss Farren, but we never before saw her mind; arch, careless, spirited elegant, and engaging.” Lawrence’s finishing touch, which added to the fluidity and animation of the portrait, was his technique of flicking white highlights across Farren’s hair, fingers, and face
Beyond Lawrence’s personal touches of painterly panache, he did largely work within the aesthetic framework of his contemporaries. It has been noted that he gleaned much of his compositional form from a fellow painter, Thomas Gainsborough. Before beginning his painting of Elizabeth Farren, Lawrence had visited Gainsborough’s studio, where it is noted on the back of a drawing by Gainsborough that Lawrence had spent “several successive days [studying] when Lord Derby employed him to paint Miss Farren.” The particular work which Lawrence was studying was Gainsborough’s drawing of an anonymous young woman who wears white, walks into a natural landscape, and looks back over her shoulder at the viewer. Both Lawrence’s painting and Gainsborough’s drawing share these particular details. (Figure 1)
figure 1
The open-air setting of grass, trees, and sky was quite popular in British portraiture of the last half of the eighteenth century. Portraits were largely commissioned by the landed aristocracy, or the aspiring—in which case displaying one’s permanency as landed Gentry was expressed through idyllic natural backgrounds. “The landed aristocracy had of course always seen itself, and has been seen by everyone else, as representing permanence….[There was no] clearer expression of continuity through time than the park landscapes, the wide lakes, and ancient trees….which are featured in so many portraits.”Some examples of portraits that include landscapes of English countryside include Sir William Beechey’s Portrait of a Young Girl (circa 1790) in fig. 2, and George Romney’s portrait of Lady Anne de la Pole (1786) in fig. 3.
figure 2 figure 3
English portraiture during the late eighteenth century showed “a keen fondness for pastoral settings and costume,” and was centered on “rural pastimes.”Lawrence’s artistic oeuvre reveals that much, of his late-eighteenth-century portraiture feature backdrops with grassy lawns, bordered by trees and foliage. To observe the lithe figure of Elizabeth Farren walking into a field of grasses and trees was not unique to Lawrence’s work. “The outdoor setting also serves the artist and sitter well. It allowed Lawrence to display his skill in painting landscapes and encouraged honorific association to his female sitter with nature, thus assuaging a moral question attached to her career as an actress.” Because Elizabeth Farren was so careful about her chaste appearance, the natural setting would have distanced her image from the general association of the time of actresses with prostitution and overt sexuality.
Lawrence did encounter some criticism for his decision to portray Farren in a fur-trimmed cape and muff, against a summer landscape. However, the incongruous pairing of winter accessories and a summer back-drop allowed Lawrence to demonstrate his ability to juxtapose the textures of the lustrous white satin cape against the filmy white muslin and the supple kid glove against the sensual fur muff. Most importantly, he was displaying fashionable clothing which would have identified Farren with the social elite, including the large fur muff, and the satin white cape with fur trim. The portrait of Melanie de Forbin-Gardanne, painted by Jean-Louis Le Barbier Le Jeune, in 1789, is another striking example of the fashion for white satin, trimmed with fur, during the time. (figure 4)
figure 4
Generally, Lawrence’s mismatched seasonal cues in Elizabeth Farren were ignored by contemporaries, in favor of its praise-worthy rendition of flesh and fabric. Most likely, Lawrence was amused and relieved by a poem that appeared in a prose book, by Thomas Bellamy:
On a Celebrated Picture
Of
Miss Farren
Incas’d in fur; as shrinking from the blast;
Midst scenes that glow with all that summer yields.
Where not a cloud the sky has overcast,
Where blooms the garden, smiles the distant fields
We know the Farren, by thy lovely face:
But sure the artist ought to shrew some cause
Why thus he sins against all truth and grace
Why thus he turns his back on nature’s laws.
Why thus, pale, shiv’ring on a summer’s day,
He paints Thalia’s child, all sportive fair and gay.
Moreover, the outdoor backdrops in Lawrence’s painting linked him to a larger aesthetic movement grounded in Neoclassicism, which extolled the Republican virtues of ancient Rome and the reign of Augustus, and was witnessed in late eighteenth-century art, architecture, and fashion. Neoclassicism allowed for English “to identify with the antique, with political liberty and civic virtue…What justified ‘civic’ classicism was its success in anchoring the principals of political liberty deep within the nation’s culture, by way of the plastic arts in giving civic values visible form.”
Neoclassicism was further reinforced by the architecture and fashion of the discovery of the Greek ruins of Pompeii in 1748. The columnar white muslin dress which Elizabeth Farren wears in Lawrence’s painting is very much occupying popular fashion of 1790.
Beginning in the mid-1780s, the robe en chemise became favorable, after the fashion-forward Queen Marie Antoinette was immortalized in a portrait by Elisabeth-Louise Vigee-Le Brun, (painted in 1783), wearing the underwear-like garment (figure 5). Although the robe en chemise’s debut amongst privileged circles was shocking, it was quickly embraced by the fashionable elite. Soon, European royalty, like the Prussian princesses Friederike and Luise, and aristocrats, like Juliette de Recamier, were wearing simple white dresses made of muslin fabric. Furthermore, the simple white dress of the 1790s symbolically encapsulated the political climate of a post-Revolutionary France, along with the ideals of democracy and the Republic.
figure 5
Neoclassicism was the prevailing aesthetic during the time in which Lawrence painted Elizabeth Farren, and the fashion for resembling Greek marble sculpture was in-line with aristocratic taste. It was the gossamer sheerness and the soft drape-ability of cotton muslin which made it best-suited to these Greek-goddess-inspired fashions Having the simple and elegant cotton muslin dress immortalized in portraiture would have been a constructive way of visually linking herself to the fashionably elite in society. Below are two fashion plates that illustrate the fashion for white dresses, coupled with the “hedge-hog” hair-do; Figure 6 is a fashion plate from Journal des Luxus und der Modern, July 1789, and Figure 7 is a fashion plate from the Magazine de Modes Nouvelles 1789.
figure 6
figure 7
Of course, the correspondence between the Greek-inspired white muslin dress in the 1790s, and the rejection of the ostentation and sexual excess of French court style was integral to Farren’s lifetime effort of maintaining her respectable and chaste image. “These neoclassical white, muslin dresses—worn by young and old, single and married women alike—signified English moral purity and industry (English cotton, not French silk).”The idea of moral purity was central to Farren’s daily conduct. She was well known for having her beloved mother as a constant chaperone, especially in the presence of her admirer and suitor, the twelfth earl of Derby. An acquaintance of Elizabeth was Joseph Farrington, who noted in his diary: “Lord Derby’s attachment to Elizabeth Farren is extraordinary. He sees her daily and always attends the plays when she performs….her mother is always with her….so careful is she of appearances.”
And Farren had good reason to keep up such appearances. She was involved in a painfully long engagement with the twelfth Earl of Derby, where she had to bide her time and wait for Derby’s estranged wife, Lady Elizabeth Hamilton— who was ill— to die. And, although it sounds heartless of Elizabeth to wait for Derby’s wife to perish, it was common knowledge that Derby’s wife had run off to live with another lover, the third Duke of Dorset and that Derby had refused to divorce her. It wasn’t until 1797 that Elizabeth could unite with Derby in marriage.
Aside from associating herself with virginal, pure images, Farren swathed herself in volumes of white muslin, which draped from her body, as a means of shrouding what was widely considered to be her only shortcoming. During the eighteenth century, it was ideal to have a bit of plumpness to the body. Because of this ideal, her critics had this to say of her:
“Miss Farren was in the perfection of her charms; her figure was
above the middle height, graceful and suited to the disposition
of drapery which served to conceal her lack of plumpness which
was her only defect; her eyes were blue, she had a lovely mouth
and a winning smile, her voice was sweet,” wrote one critic and
another, “Her figure is of that slight texture which allows and
requires the use of full and flowing drapery—an advantage of
which she knows well how to avail herself.”
Elizabeth was very sensitive about her body’s thin appearance, and in her attempt to maintain her public image, requested that Thomas Lawrence add some volume to her figure in his painting of her. Proof of this is found in a letter that Elizabeth wrote to Lawrence in 1792, in which she begs Lawrence to rework her portrait, given the embarrassment of having her friends tease her for her appearance in the painting, where she was ‘so thin….that you might blow it away.’Despite her attempts to alter her “only imperfection,” it has been revealed through modern X-rays and infra-red reflectography that the painting has never been altered. (figure 8)
figure 8
Despite her inability to control every aspect of her public image, Elizabeth Farren was held in high regard amongst the upper crust of society. Her rise to fame and acceptance in high society attracted a few jealous gossips, but they had little fuel to run their rumor mill. With her respectability and gentility, Farren was able to override her profession’s dubious connections to brothels and loose living, and model herself after the aristocracy. It was also helpful that during the late-nineteenth century, there was a vogue for plays about high society, decency, and delicacy—plays in which she excelled as a woman of noble breeding. She was so adept at playing ladies of high birth on the stage, that, soon, the boundaries between her image on the stage and her image off the stage became confused and obscured. When Elizabeth played Lady Emily Grayville, in Burgoyne’s play, The Heiress, in 1787, the critic Adolphus noted her performance in the Morning Chronicle:
“[Farren] absolutely identified herself with this model of fashionable
excellence. In the female characters, every actress shone…but above
all, and to such a degree as to attract the separate thanks of the author,
Miss Farren displayed her characteristic excellencies in Lady Emily
Grayville. Where high and honorable sentiments, burning virtuous
sensibilities, sincere and uncontrollable affection, animated through
sportive reprehension, elegant persiflage, or arch pointed satire, were
the aim of the author, Miss Farren amply filled out his thought and by
her exquisite representation made it, even when faint and feeble in itself,
striking ad forcible. And these irresistible graces of her address and
manner, the polished beauties of action and gait, and all the indescribable
little charms which give fascination to the woman of birth and fashion,
the power and inspiration of Miss Farren’s performance may in some
degree be appreciated. She had the feeling, judgement, grace and
discretion.”
The celebrity status and high visibility that the late eighteenth-century actress had achieved meant that their personas would forever be linked to their costumes and characters. It is interesting to observe that Miss Farren’s highly regarded portrayals of refined ladies on the stage crossed over into real life. (figure 9)Even amongst her many friends of high social standing, her grace, charm, and respectability were notable. She regularly mixed and mingled with the “ton” at Richmond House, where she was praised for her joie de vivre. One of her acquaintances, Mrs. Matthews, said of her, “[She was] a fascinating woman….ladies of rank and character received and visited her on the most familiar terms of friendship and daily extended the circle of her distinguished friends.” Because she rubbed elbows with high society, it was even more important for her—a woman coming from a middle-class background—to maintain her image as a fashionable lady of high status. The rather large fox fur muff in the portrait by Lawrence would have certainly sent a visual message to her contemporaries, outlining her ability to buy luxury goods and display them.
figure 9
If one observes the muff in the painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence, the bulbous shape, large size, and appearance of softness is notable in the accouterment. But, overly large muffs—like the one which appears in the painting— were at the height of fashion during the 1780s and 1790s, so it is not unusual to see Elizabeth Farren toting a muff of this size. There are several humorous satirical illustrations that appear around the time that Sir Thomas Lawrence painted Elizabeth Farren, in 1790, which confirm the rather ridiculous size of fur muffs in the last half of the eighteenth century.
In 1787, Samuel William Fores published his satirical cartoon of a fashionable lady whose entire body has been engulfed by a gigantic fur muff (Figure 10.) Despite the fun which was poked at the large muff, it was readily used in late-eighteenth-century portraiture to convey ideas about the fashionability or the sensuality of the sitter. Whether the fur muff was perceived as libidinous or proper in a portrait had much to do with the perceived respectability of the sitter, as Laura Engel explains through her comparison of two British actresses who were contemporaries of Elizabeth Farren: Sarah Siddons and Mary Robinson. Mary Robinson’s personal character was connected to her affairs with Charles Fox and Prime Minister North, as well as her bouts of erratic behavior. Unlike Mary Robinson, Sarah Siddons had a reputation as a respectable woman, and her theatrical roles were often connected to mother or Queen figures. When Sarah Siddons posed for Thomas Gainsborough for a painting in 1785, her use of the muff in portraiture was perceived as a “stylish and elegant accessory designed to promote Siddons’ image as a woman of quality and grace, a celebrity worthy of admiration by respectable women.”
figure 10
Like Siddons, Elizabeth Farren had a long-held reputation as a respectable woman, thus, the muff in the painting by Lawrence is used as a signifier for Farren’s role as a consumer and connects her to the fashionable elite of society. The social boundaries between the aristocracy and popular actress were further blurred by the fact that famous artists were painting both nobility and actresses, using the same techniques and iconography. The work of Lawrence is no exception. One of the most telling indicators of a sitter’s status is her ability to consume and display luxury goods like the luxurious fur trimmed, silk satin cape, or the voluminous fox fur muff which Lawrence makes central to his painting. “Lawrence aspired to fame as a portraitist within fashionable society, so a large percentage of his clients were women. In the late eighteenth century, women in the upper and middle classes were charged with the burden and pleasure of consuming luxury goods such as high fashion and jewelry, and portraiture was a means for them to convey their fashionable taste.”
For Elizabeth Farren, having her portrait painted by a renowned artist, and displaying her ability to consume luxury items like furs was akin to an advertisement that transmitted ideas about her respectability as a lady and her inherent fashionable taste. Especially during the time of Elizabeth Farren’s career, which began in 1777 and ended in 1797, British actresses witnessed an “unprecedented conspicuousness in the public eye.” Elizabeth Farren had to carefully construct her public image because, like luxury goods, her image was a highly consumable item. The diaphanous white muslin fabric of her gown, the silvery white satin of her cape, and the richness of her fox fir trim and muff all act as visual signifiers of her status as a respectable lady of high social standing.
Bibliography and Further reading:
Agres, Philip. Classical Culture and the Idea of Rome in Eighteenth-Century England. Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Albinson, Cassandra A. “The Construction of Desire: Lawrence’s Portraits of Women.” Sir Thomas Lawrence: Regency Power & Brilliance. Yale University Press, 2010.
Albinson, Cassandra, Peter Funnell and Lucy Peltz. Thomas Lawrence: Regency Power and Brilliance. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010.
Berg, Maxine. Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Oxford University Press, 2007.
Bloxam, Suzanne. Walpole’s Queen of Comedy: Elizabeth Farren, Countess of Derby. Worcester: Billing and Sons Ltd, 1988.
Bradford, Isabella. “Big and Bigger Muffs: Reality Versus Caricature c. 1790,” Two Nerdy History Girls, (April 21, 2013) http://twonwrdyhistorygirls.blogspot.com/2013/04/big-bigger-muffs-reality-vs-caricature,html.
Brooks, Helen E.M. “Negotiating Marriage and Professional Autonomy in the Careers of Eighteenth-century Actresses.” In Eighteenth-century Life, 39-76. Kent: University of Kent Press, 2011.
Cole, Daniel James. “Hierarchy of Seduction in Regency Fashion.” Jane Austen Society of North America, Vol. 33, No. 1, 2012.
Conway, Alison. “Private Interests: The Portrait and the Novel in Eighteenth-Century England.” In Eighteenth-Century Life, 1-15. Kent: University of Kent, 1997.
Engel, Laura. Fashioning Celebrity: 18th-Century British Actresses and Strategies for Image Making. Ohio State University Press, 2011.
Engel, Laura. “The Muff Affair: Fashioning Celebrity in the Portraits of Late Eighteenth-Century British Actresses.” In Fashion Theory, Volume 13, Issue 3, 279-298. Berg: 2009.
Garlick, Kenneth. Sir Thomas Lawrence: A complete Catalogue of the Oil Paintings. New York: New York University Press, 1989.
Johnson, James William. “What was Neo-Classicism?” Journal of British Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1, 1969. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Lubrich, Naomi. “The Little White Dress: Politics and Polyvalence in Revolutionary France.” Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture. 2015.
Maeder, Edward. An Elegant Art: Fashion and Fantasy in the Eighteenth Century. The Los Angeles Museum of Art, 1983.
Mannings, David. The British Face: A View of Portraiture, 1625-1850. London: P & D Colnaghi & Co., Ltd., 1986.
Oestreich, Kate Faber. “Fashioning Chastity: British Marriage Plots and the Tailoring of Desire, 1789-1928.” Dissertation. Ohio State University Press, 2008.
Perry, Gill and Michael Rossington. Femininity and Masculinity in Eighteenth-Century Art and Culture. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1994.
Ribeiro, Aileen. The Art of Dress: Fashion in England and France 1750-1820. New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1995.
Ribeiro, Aileen. “Thoughts on Changing Attitudes to British Portraiture.” The British Face: A View of Portraiture 1625-1850. P & D Colnaghi & Co. Ltd., 1986.
Wahrman, Dror. The Making of the Modern Self: Identity and Culture in Eighteenth-Century England. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004.
Ylivuori, Soile. “Rethinking Female Chastity and Gentlewoman’s Honour in Eighteenth-Century England.” In The Historical Journal, 71-97. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Adolphus, Morning Chronicle, January 11, 1786.
Bellamy, Thomas. Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, Vil.ii. 1795.
Hayes, John. “Gainsborough’s “Richmond Water –Walk.’” Burlington Magazine. January 1969.
Journal des Luxus und der Moden, July 1789.
Jeune , Jean-Louis Le Barbier Le. Melanie de Forbin-Gardanne. Ackland Museum, Chapel Hill, NC, 1789.
Magazine de Modes Nouvelles, 1789.
Romney, George. Lady Anne de la Pole. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1786
“The Muff,” published by SW Fores, London, 1787. Copyright: the Trustees of the British Museum.
Vigee-Le Brun, Elisabeth-Louise Marie Antoinette. Private Collection of Heissische Hausstiftung. Germany, 1783.
[1] Elizabeth Farren, by Sir Thomas Lawrence (1790). Heilbrunn Timeline of Art and History, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
[2] Albinson, Cassandra A. “The Construction of Desire: Lawrence’s Portraits of Women.” Sir Thomas Lawrence: Regency Power & Brilliance. Yale University Press, 2010, 35.
[3] Albinson, Cassandra A. “The Construction of Desire: Lawrence’s Portraits of Women.” Sir Thomas Lawrence: Regency Power & Brilliance. Yale University Press, 2010, 32.
[4] Garlick, Kenneth. Sir Thomas Lawrence: A complete Catalogue of the Oil Paintings. New York: New York University Press, 1989, 11.
[5] Albinson, Cassandra A. “The Construction of Desire: Lawrence’s Portraits of Women.” Sir Thomas Lawrence: Regency Power & Brilliance. Yale University Press, 2010,35.
[6] Ibid. 31.
[7] Public Advisor, 30 April 1790.
[8] Albinson, Cassandra A. “The Construction of Desire: Lawrence’s Portraits of Women.” Sir Thomas Lawrence: Regency Power & Brilliance. Yale University Press, 2010, 35.
[9] Hayes, John. “Gainsborough’s “Richmond Water –Walk.’” Burlington Magazine. January 1969.31.
[10]Mannings, David. The British Face: A View of Portraiture, 1625-1850. London: P & D Colnaghi & Co., Ltd., 1986, 17.
[11] Ibid. 20.
[12] Garlick, Kenneth. Sir Thomas Lawrence: A complete Catalogue of the Oil Paintings. New York: New York University Press, 1989.
[13] Albinson, Cassandra A. “The Construction of Desire: Lawrence’s Portraits of Women.” Sir Thomas Lawrence: Regency Power & Brilliance. Yale University Press, 2010, 35.
[14] Bloxam, Suzanne. Walpole’s Queen of Comedy: Elizabeth Farren, Countess of Derby. Worcester: Billing and Sons Ltd, 1988, 119.
[15] Albinson, Cassandra A. “The Construction of Desire: Lawrence’s Portraits of Women.” Sir Thomas Lawrence: Regency Power & Brilliance. Yale University Press, 2010, 98.
[16] Aileen Ribeiro, The Art of Dress: Fashion in England and France 1750-1820. New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1995. 78-9
[17] Bellamy, Thomas. Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, Vil.ii. 1795. Cited in Bloxam, Suzanne. Walpole’s Queen of Comedy: Elizabeth Farren, Countess of Derby. Worcester: Billing and Sons Ltd, 1988, 119-120.
[18] Johnson, James William. “What was Neo-Classicism?” Journal of British Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1, 1969. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 52.
[19] Agres, Philip. Classical Culture and the Idea of Rome in Eighteenth-Century England. Cambridge University Press, 1999, XIV.
[20] Cole, Daniel James. “Hierarchy and Seduction in Regency Fashion” Jane Austen Society of North America. Vol.33, No. 1, 2012. 3.
[21] Ibid. 4.
[22] Lubrich, Naomi. “The Little White Dress: Politics and Polyvalence in Revolutionary France.” Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture. 2015. 273.
[23] Cole, Daniel James. “Hierarchy and Seduction in Regency Fashion” Jane Austen Society of North America. Vol.33, No. 1, 2012. 4.
[24] Oestreich, Kate Faber. “Fashioning Chastity: British Marriage Plots and the Tailoring of Desire, 1789-1928.” Dissertation. Ohio State University Press, 2008, 57.
[25] Farrington, Joseph. Farington Diaries, Vol. 13. Royal Libraries, Windsor Castle, 803.
[26] Bloxam, Suzanne. Walpole’s Queen of Comedy: Elizabeth Farren, Countess of Derby. Worcester: Billing and Sons Ltd, 1988, 67.
[27] Ibid., 61.
[28] Albinson, Cassandra, Peter Funnell and Lucy Peltz. Thomas Lawrence: Regency Power and Brilliance. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010, 101.
[29] Ibid.
[30] Bloxam, Suzanne. Walpole’s Queen of Comedy: Elizabeth Farren, Countess of Derby. Worcester: Billing and Sons Ltd, 1988, 112.
[31]Ibid., 68.
[32] Ibid., 50.
[33] Adolphus, Morning Chronicle, January 11, 1786. Cited in Bloxam, Suzanne. Walpole’s Queen of Comedy: Elizabeth Farren, Countess of Derby. Worcester: Billing and Sons Ltd, 1988, 76.
[34] Engel, Laura. Fashioning Celebrity: 18th-Century British Actresses and Strategies for Image Making. Ohio State University Press, 2011, 20.
[35] Bloxam, Suzanne. Walpole’s Queen of Comedy: Elizabeth Farren, Countess of Derby. Worcester: Billing and Sons Ltd, 1988, 73.
[36] Engel, Laura. “The Muff Affair: Fashioning Celebrity in the Portraits of Late Eighteenth-Century British Actresses.” In Fashion Theory, Volume 13, Issue 3, 279-298. Berg: 2009, 279.
[37] Bradford, Isabella. “Big and Bigger Muffs: Reality Versus Caricature c. 1790,” Two Nerdy History Girls, (April 21, 2013) http://twonerdyhistorygirls.blogspot.com/2013/04/big-bigger-muffs-reality-vs-caricature.html
[38] “The Muff,” published by SW Fores, London, 1787. Copyright: the Trustees of the British Museum.
[39] Engel, Laura. Fashioning Celebrity: 18th-Century British Actresses and Strategies for Image Making. Ohio State University Press, 2011, 72.
[40] Engel, Laura. “The Muff Affair: Fashioning Celebrity in the Portraits of Late Eighteenth-Century British Actresses.” In Fashion Theory, Volume 13, Issue 3, 279-298. Berg: 2009, 288-28.
[41] Engel, Laura. Fashioning Celebrity: 18th-Century British Actresses and Strategies for Image Making. Ohio State University Press, 2011, 27.
[42]Ibid., 17.
[43] Albinson, Cassandra, Peter Funnell and Lucy Peltz. Sir Thomas Lawrence: Regency Power & Brilliance. Yale University Press, 2010, 30.
[44] Asleson, Robyn. Notorious Muse: The Actress in British Art and Culture, 1776-1812. New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2003, 1.
cliocult...Muse your brain! 
The adventures of Elizabeth Farron et al sound like they would make for an absorbing film.
I had never heard of her before reading your post, but I’m glad I bumped into her. Thanks for sharing all your research and showing us what the painting means.