Strawberry Hill Theatre

For a few years at the turn of the nineteenth century, the sculptor and society hostess, Anne Seymour Damer, staged private theatricals at Strawberry Hill House, Twickenham. Strawberry Hill House—often called simply Strawberry Hill—is a Gothic Revival villa that was built in Twickenham, London, by Horace Walpole (1717–1797) from 1749 onward. It is a typical example of the "Strawberry Hill Gothic" style of architecture,and it prefigured the nineteenth-century Gothic Revival. Anne Damer inherited Strawberry Hill House from her godfather and relative, Horace Walpole.

Anne Seymour Damer (née Conway; 26 October 1748 – 28 May 1828) was an English sculptor. Described as a 'female genius' by Horace Walpole, she was trained in sculpture by Giuseppe Ceracchi and John Bacon. Influenced by the Enlightenment, Damer was an author, traveller, theatrical producer and actress, as well as an acclaimed sculptor.

During the period 1784–1818, Damer exhibited 32 works as an honorary exhibitor at the Royal Academy. Her work, primarily busts in Neoclassical style, developed from early wax sculptures to technically complex ones in works in terracotta, bronze and marble. Her subjects, largely drawn from friends and colleagues in Whig circles, included Lady Melbourne, Nelson, Joseph Banks, George III, Mary Berry, Charles James Fox and herself. She executed several actors' portraits, such as the busts of her friends Sarah Siddons and Elizabeth Farren (as the Muses Melpomene and Thalia).

She produced keystone sculptures of Isis and Tamesis for each side of the central arch on the bridge at Henley-on-Thames. The original models are in the Henley Gallery of the River and Rowing Museum nearby. Another major architectural work was her 10-foot statue of Apollo, now destroyed, for the frontage of Drury Lane theatre. She also created two bas-reliefs for the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery of scenes from Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra.

Damer frequently appeared in Private Theatricals, including the plays performed at Richmond House organised by the Duke of Richmond from 1787. She also took an active role in the Pic Nic Society.

In 1800, she staged Arthur Murphy's comedy, The Old Maid (1761) and Henry Fielding’s The Intriguing Chambermaid (1733). In, she staged 1801 Fashionable Friends, a satirical comedy written by Mary Berry. The farce was Lovers’ Quarrels, based on Vanbrugh’s The Mistake (1705). Having enjoyed this event, the company immediately staged The Devil to Pay; or, the Wives Metamorphosed (1731). A three-act ballad opera by Charles Coffey (d. 1745) and John Mottley (1692-1750), adapted from Thomas Jevon's Devil of a Wife (1686).

Gallery

• 
  Sir Joseph Banks by Anne Seymour Damer
• 
  Engraving of Coriolanus (c. 1789), one of two bas-reliefs created by Damer for the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery
• 
  Sculpture of Tamesis. Downstream keystone of the central arch of Henley Bridge
• 
  "The Damerian Apollo". 1798 caricature of Anne Seymour Damer chiselling the posterior of a large Apollo
• 
  Anne Seymour Damer, by Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792)
• 
  Statue of Anne Seymour Damer, by Giuseppe Ceracchi

Personal life

Damer's friends included a number of influential Whigs and aristocrats. Her guardian and friend Horace Walpole was a significant figure, who helped foster her career and on his death left her his London villa, Strawberry Hill. She also moved in literary and theatrical circles, where her friends included the poet and dramatist Joanna Baillie, the author Mary Berry, and the actors Sarah Siddons and Elizabeth Farren. She frequently took part in masques at the Pantheon and amateur theatricals at the London residence of the Duke of Richmond, who was married to her half-sister, Lady Mary Bruce

A number of sources have named Damer as being involved in lesbian relationships, particularly relating to her close friendship with Mary Berry, to whom she had been introduced by Walpole in 1789, and with whom she lived together in her later years. Even during her marriage, her likings for male clothing and demonstrative friendships with other women were publicly noted and satirised by hostile commentators such as Hester Thrale and in the anonymous pamphlet A Sapphick Epistle from Jack Cavendish to the Honourable and most Beautiful, Mrs D— (c. 1770).

A romance between Damer and Elizabeth Farren, who was mentioned by Thrale, is the central storyline in the 2004 novel Life Mask by Emma Donoghue.

References

• Seewald, Jan. Theatrical Sculpture. Skulptierte Bildnisse berühmter englischer Schauspieler (1750–1850), insbesondere David Garrick und Sarah Siddons. Herbert Utz Verlag, München 2007.

External links

• Artcyclopedia information including links to artworks
• Template:NPG name
• Portraits by Anne Seymour Damer at the National Portrait Gallery, London
• Artwork Template:Webarchive in Tate, London
• WWAR information
• A&A art and architecture images Template:Webarchive including a marble sculpture self portrait from the Courtauld Institute of Art
• The Twickenham Museum Template:Webarchive
• Finding facts about Anne Damer 1748-1828 on MrsDamer.com