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" Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Mrs. Nesbitt as Circe (1781): "
Southern, Hannah
Bellow, Juliet
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Latin Dissertation
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| Language of Document
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English
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| Record Number
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1114516
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| Doc. No
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TLpq2408566272
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| Main Entry
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Bellow, Juliet
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Southern, Hannah
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| Title & Author
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Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Mrs. Nesbitt as Circe (1781):\ Southern, HannahBellow, Juliet
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| College
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American University
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| Date
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2020
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| student score
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2020
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| Degree
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M.A.
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| Page No
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66
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| Abstract
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In the spring of 1781, society hostess and former courtesan Mary Nesbitt commissioned Sir Joshua Reynolds to paint her portrait, a work now called Mrs. Nesbitt as Circe (1781). As its current title suggests, the portrait depicts Nesbitt in the guise of Circe, a sorceress and sexual temptress in ancient Greek mythology. However, the painting freely interprets Circe’s story. Nesbitt is surrounded by three animals in the portrait—a domestic cat, a black monkey, and a leopard—none of which feature in the Homeric text or other versions of Circe’s tale. Building on recent scholarship that considers how Georgian portraiture could function as a form of self-fashioning for both the artist and sitter, this thesis examines the unusual iconography of Mrs. Nesbitt as Circe. I offer a series of hypotheses that illuminate this enigmatic image in its context, analyzing its complex relationship to concepts of gendered and national identity in late eighteenth-century Britain. Nesbitt’s choice to depict herself as this sexually alluring mythological character is a clear reference to her own history as a courtesan, a daring move for both her and Reynolds, risking public approbation for celebrating her lack of propriety. Yet the provocative nature of this allusion to Circe is tempered by the menagerie of non-European animals around the sitter. I argue this iconography links Nesbitt to Britain’s imperial and racial exploits of the period, which included colonial expansion in Africa, the rise of the East India Company, and increasing trade throughout the Middle East. Through this oblique reference to Britain’s power overseas, Reynolds secured Nesbitt’s white privilege, visually identifying her with the nation’s colonial military and economic power.
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| Subject
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Art history
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British portraiture
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Joshua Reynolds
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