Very nearly as noble and beautiful is the portrait by Gainsborough. The delicacy of a refined English complexion has never been so beautifully painted, while the tone and colour is as exquisite as anything Gainsborough ever did. The light transparent blue, cool yellow, crimson, brown, and black, forms an enchanting setting for the lovely head, which stands out clear and delicate. It is said, that while Gainsborough was painting her, after working in an absorbed silence for some time, he suddenly exclaimed, "Damn it, Madam, there is no end to your nose!" And, indeed, it does stand out a little sharply. But the great feature of the Kembles was the jaw-bone. The actress herself exclaimed, laughing, "The Kemble jaw-bone! Why, it is as notorious as Samson's!" Mrs. Jameson declares that she saw Mrs. Siddons sitting near Gainsborough's portrait two years before her death, and, looking from one to the other, she says, "It was like her still, at the age of seventy."
Years after, Fanny Kemble, her grand-daughter, while walking through the streets of Baltimore, saw an engraving of Reynolds's "Tragic Muse" and Lawrence's picture of John Kemble's "Hamlet." "We stopped," she says, "before them, and my father looked with a great deal of emotion at these beautiful representations of his beautiful kindred. It was a sort of sad surprise to meet them in this other world, where we are wandering aliens and strangers."
From the numerous portraits extant of Mrs. Siddons we can form an idea of her appearance, of which such legendary accounts have been handed down. She was much above middle height; as a girl she was exceedingly thin and spare, and this remained her characteristic until she was about twenty-two or three.
