Lisa love has taken on a new and subtler _nuance_. The portrait of Mrs. Siddons is the most famous of the pictures of actresses which Reynolds painted, and Mrs. Siddons, of all the women of that time, is the one whose portrait occupied the painters most. She was the daughter of Roger Kemble, the actor, and sister of that pretty actress, Mrs. Twiss, whose portrait by Reynolds (in 1784) we also have, and of the famous John Philip Kemble, who figures so often in the portrait gallery of Lawrence, as Hamlet, Cato, Coriolanus, Richard III, etc. Born to the boards, as it were, she had, when still a child, joined her parents on their Thespian pilgrimages, and had had many engagements in the provinces, at Birmingham, Manchester, and Bath, before she was recruited by the playwright Sheridan for the Drury Lane company in London. She made her _début_ there on 10th October 1782, and was hailed forthwith as the greatest actress of her time. Lady Macbeth was her great part; in that she was painted both by Romney and Lawrence. Reynolds painted her as the Tragic Muse. A diadem encircles her hair, she sits upon a throne, the throne rests upon clouds. Behind her stand two allegorical beings, Crime and Remorse, two quite unfortunate figures. But the principal figure is truly great, in its noble, regal attitude, and quite unconstrained in its dramatic pose. Reynolds had the composition in his mind many weeks before Mrs. Siddons sat for him in the autumn of 1783. "Take your seat upon the throne for which you were born, and suggest to me the idea of the Tragic Muse." With these words he conducted her to the pedestal. "I made a few steps," the actress relates, "and then took at once the attitude in which the Tragic Muse has remained." When the picture was finished, says Sir Joshua, gallant as ever: "I cannot lose this opportunity of sending my name to posterity on the hem of your garment." And he, who hardly ever signed his pictures, wrote in large characters his name and the date on the gold-embroidered border of the dress. The original picture has been in the possession of the Grosvenor family since 1822; a second copy is in the gallery at Dulwich. [Illustration: REYNOLDS. OLIVER GOLDSMITH.]