Mrs Abington (c.1737–1815), as the Comic Muse

Frances Abington almost certainly commissioned this portrait herself, which was unusual for a woman and more unusual for an actress. She had started out selling flowers and singing in the street, known around Covent Garden as Nosegay Fan, and by the late 1760s she was one of the best-paid performers at Drury Lane, with an audience that copied whatever she wore on stage. Reynolds gives her the part of the muse of comedy, leaning against the plinth of the stone muse with the comic mask in her hand. A few years after it was done she sent the canvas back to him to have the dress and the hair brought up to date, and he toned down the sprigged pattern and restyled the head for the plainer taste of the early 1770s. In 1777 she was the first Lady Teazle in Sheridan's School for Scandal.