Mrs. Siddons
by CHANTREY, Sir Francis Legatt, Marble
Sir Francis Legatt Chantrey enjoyed enormous popularity in England during his lifetime. Among the eleven funerary monuments that he executed for Westminster Abbey in London is that of Mrs. Siddons, the great actress, who died in 1831. Commissioned by Macready, it stands in the St. Andrew chapel in the north transept. The actress who had inspired all the English painters of the 18th century appears here as a Roman Vestal Virgin, in a stiff, cold composition lacking imagination and typical of the style of this Neoclassical sculptor.