A Bravura Air Mandane

James Gillray

A Bravura Air Mandane

London, H Humphrey Dec22nd 1801

Etching

Original hand colouring

355 x 250 mm

Neat marginal repair lower left

£850

Mrs. Billington, directed to the right, sings with head thrown back, right hand on her breast, left arm extended. She is stout and majestic, wears many jewels and quasi-contemporary dress, with four tall feathers and jewelled aigrette in her hair, from which hangs a long drapery.

Mrs. Billington’s return to London, in 1801, caused a sensation. Her first appearance was at Covent Garden in the part of Mandane in Arne’s opera of ‘Artaxerxes’. ‘Her new bravura song at the end of the first act . . . astonished the audience . . .’ ‘Her en bon point is a little beyond the ton of the day; but her figure is grand; and derives from her deportment, step, and manners, an uncommon interest.’ ‘Lond. Chron.’, 6 Oct. 1801. She is here satirized for her ‘inelegant’ attitude ‘of pressing her hands against her bosom in passages that require exertion. It never fails to communicate ideas of labour, struggle and pain.’