Minggu, 31 Mei 2009

London Prints Domestic Chores

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London printmakers published hundreds of popular & satirical mezzotints between 1760 and 1800, many of which quickly found their way to the British American colonies and later to the new republic.

These prints give a glimpse into the everyday life of women in the larger British world which is seldom found in more formal art.

The Landlord's Daughter. Haines and Son, London. 1798. Yale Center for British Art, Yale University. (This depiction is a detail from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact Yale for an accurate image.)

Camp Laundry. Robert Sayer & J. Bennett. London 1782. Metropolitan Museum of Art. (This depiction is a detail from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact the Met for an accurate image.)

Lacemaking. John Fairburn. London. 1795. Harry Elkins Widener Collection, Houghton Library fo the Harvard College Library. (This depiction is a detail from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact the library for an accurate image.)

Lady Working Tambour The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. This library is located in Farmington, Connecticut. (This depiction is a detail from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact the library for an accurate image.)

Ironing Henry Morland Henry Morland Pinxt. Philip Dawe Fecit. Carrington Bowles. London. 1769. The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. This library is located in Farmington, Connecticut. (This depiction is a detail from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact the library for an accurate image.)

March (Lady Holding Sewing). R. Dighton. Carrington Bowles. London. 1784. The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. This library is located in Farmington, Connecticut. (This depiction is a detail from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact the library for an accurate image.)

Soaping Linnen. Henry Morland Pinxt. Philip Dawe Fecit. Carrington Bowles. London. 1769. The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. This library is located in Farmington, Connecticut. (This depiction is a detail from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact the library for an accurate image.)

The Fair Seamstress. Heilman pinxt J. Watson fecit. for John Bowles, London. 1760s. The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. This library is located in Farmington, Connecticut. (This depiction is a detail from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact the library for an accurate image.)















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Sabtu, 30 Mei 2009

London Prints 1767 Calendar

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London printmakers published hundreds of popular & satirical mezzotints between 1760 and 1800, many of which quickly found their way to the British American colonies and later to the new republic.

These 1767 calendar prints give a glimpse into the everyday life of gentlewomen in the larger British world which is seldom found in more formal art. They depict clothing changes across the seasons as well as outdoor activities.


January. Printed for Robert Sayer, London. 1767. Yale Center for British Art. (This depiction is a detail from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact Yale for an accurate image.)

February. Printed for Robert Sayer, London. 1767. Yale Center for British Art. (This depiction is a detail from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact Yale for an accurate image.)

March. Printed for Robert Sayer, London. 1767. Yale Center for British Art. (This depiction is a detail from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact Yale for an accurate image.)

April. Printed for Robert Sayer, London. 1767. Yale Center for British Art. (This depiction is a detail from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact Yale for an accurate image.)

May. Printed for Robert Sayer, London. 1767. Yale Center for British Art. (This depiction is a detail from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact Yale for an accurate image.)

June. Printed for Robert Sayer, London. 1767. Yale Center for British Art. (This depiction is a detail from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact Yale for an accurate image.)

July. Printed for Robert Sayer, London. 1767. Yale Center for British Art. (This depiction is a detail from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact Yale for an accurate image.)

August. Printed for Robert Sayer, London. 1767. Yale Center for British Art. (This depiction is a detail from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact Yale for an accurate image.)

September. Printed for Robert Sayer, London. 1767. Yale Center for British Art. (This depiction is a detail from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact Yale for an accurate image.)

October. Printed for Robert Sayer, London. 1767. Yale Center for British Art. (This depiction is a detail from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact Yale for an accurate image.)

November. Printed for Robert Sayer, London. 1767. Yale Center for British Art. (This depiction is a detail from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact Yale for an accurate image.)

December. Printed for Robert Sayer, London. 1767. Yale Center for British Art. (This depiction is a detail from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact Yale for an accurate image.)













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Selasa, 26 Mei 2009

London Prints Fashion

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Just as British American colonials were recognizing that they were developing into a far different society than the hereditary and aristocratic world of the mother country, they were in the midst of a full-blown consumer revolution. It was just that consumer revolution which was giving unaccustomed power and wealth to the merchant class.

Affluent merchant families were building grand houses and filling them with imported goods. Textiles, furniture, and table wares flowed into the ports for merchants to sell, and local artisans began to flourish as well. Colonists, without the traditional genetic credentials, were displaying these new acquisitions to project an appearance of refinement and gentility akin to that of the landed gentry in England. Women became more aware of the latest taste in fashion and enhanced their appearance with wigs, cosmetics, hair ornaments, and hats.

As some in the middle of the 18th century worried about the loss of beauty and the enduring role of women as they grew older, others fretted about the ostentatious displays of fashion and cosmetic beauty. Visible distances between the classes were increasing. Values of economy and extravagance would be at war, until the real Revolutionary war would see American country-made economy would become a virtue, even if it was just a temporary trend.

As usual, 18th century pundits used sarcasm and irony to highlight the problem. One poem appearing in the 1756 March editions of both Boston and New York newspapers spoke to the complicit role of the portrait painter in ostentatious display.

THE PETITION
Artful Painter by this Plan

Draw a Female if you can.
Paint her Features bold and gay,
Casting Modesty away;
Let her Art the Mode express,
And fantastick be her Dress.
Cock her up a little Hat
Of various Colours, this and that;
Make her Cap the Fashion new,
An Inch of Gauze or Lace will do.
Cut her Hair the shortest Dock;
Nicely braid the Forehead Lock;
Put her on a Negligee,
A short Sack, or Shepherdee
Ruffled up to keep her warm,
Eight or Ten upon an Arm.
Let her Hoop extending wide
Show her Garters and her Pride.
Her Stockings must be pure and white
For they are seldom out of Sight.
Let her have a high heel'd Shoe,
And a glittering Buckle too.
Other Trifles that you find,
Make quite Careless as her Mind.
Thus equipped, she's charming Ware
For the Races or the Fair.

London's monthly Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure ridiculed the constant changes in female fashion,

Now dress'd in a cap,
now naked in none;
Now loose in a mob,
now close in a Joan;
Without handkerchief now,
and now buried in ruff;
Now plain as a Quaker,
now all in a puff;
Now a shape in neat stays,
now a slattern in jumps
Now high in French heels,
now low in your pumps;
Now monstrous in hoops,
now trapish, and walking
With your petticoats
clung to your heels like a maulkin;
Like the cock on the tower,
that shows you the weather,
You are hardly the same for two days together.

In 1754, a New York newspaper published the satirical view of the extravagance of women's fashion from a poem published in 1753 in London.

A RECEIPT FOR MODERN DRESS
Hang a small bugle cap on as big as a crown,

Snout it off with a flower, vulgo dict. a pompoon;
Let your powder be grey, and braid up your hair
Like the mane of a colt, to be sold at a fair.
A short pair of jumps half an ell from your chin,
To make you appear like one just lying in;
Before, for your breast, put a stomacher bib on
Ragout it with cutlets of silver and ribbon.
Your neck and your shoulders both naked should be,
Was it not for Vandyke blown with Chevaux de Frize.
Let your gown be a sack, blue, yellow, or green,
And frizzle your elbows with ruffles sixteen;
Furl off your lawn aprons with flounces in rows,
Puff and pucker up knots on your arms and your toes;
Make your petticoats short, that a hoop eight yards wide
May decently show how your garters are tied.
With fringes of knotting, your dicky cabob
On slippers of velvet set gold a-la-daube.
But mount on French heels when you go to a ball,
'Tis the fashion to totter and shew you can fall;
Throw modesty out from your manners and face,
A-la-mode de Frangois you're a bit for his Grace.

In 1756, a New York newspaper offered this satirical fashion advice,

The dress of the year 55 that was worn
Is laid in the grave and new fashions are born:
Then hear what your good correspondents advance,
'Tis the Pink of the Mode and dated from France:
Let your cap be a butterfly slightly hung on
Like the shell of a lapwing just hatch'd on her crown
Behind, with a coach horse short dock, cut your hair
Stick a flower before Screw-whiff 'with an air,
A Vandicke in frize your neck must surround,
Turn your lawns into gauze, let your Brussels be blond;
Let your stomacher reach from shoulder to shoulder,
And your breast will appear much fairer and bolder.
Wear a gown or a sack as fancies prevail,
Hut with flounces and furbelows ruffle your tail.
Let your hoop show your stockings & legs to your knees,
And leave men as little as may be to guess.
For other small ornaments, do as before,
Wear ribbons a hundred and ruffles a score;
Let your tail, like your dress, be fantastic and odd,
And then you'll show a way in taste A-la-mode.

A sarcastic and anonymous "Sally Tippet" wrote a letter to a New York newspaper in 1761.

"Ladies...Nothing however looks more surfeiting to me than your home-bred fashions and complements; there is something so rustic, so Bridget-Norton-like in them, which is visible in most of our city ladies, that I believe the one-half have neither milliners, dolls, dressing-maids, dancing-masters, nor indeed pier-glasses."

In addition to the written satire, London printmakers published hundreds of popular & satirical mezzotints between 1760 and 1800, many of which quickly found their way to the British American colonies and later to the new republic.

Lady in her Nightcap at Breakfast. Carington Bowles, May & Printseller, London 1772. Library of Congress. (This depiction is a detail from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact the library for an accurate image.)
The Toilet. Robert Sayer, London. 1786. The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale Unviersity. This library is located in Farmington, Connecticut. (This depiction is a detail from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact the library for an accurate image.)

The Wig. James Gillray (1756-1815). The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. This library is located in Farmington, Connecticut. (This depiction is a detail from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact the library for an accurate image.)

Wig Caught Fire. Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827). The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. This library is located in Farmington, Connecticut. (This depiction is a detail from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact the library for an accurate image.)

Tight Lacing. London. Published by William Holland, 1777. The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. This library is located in Farmington, Connecticut. (This depiction is a detail from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact the library for an accurate image.)

The Inconvenience of Wigs. Carle Vernet (1758-1836). The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. This library is located in Farmington, Connecticut. (This depiction is a detail from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact the library for an accurate image.)

French Hair Dresser. Published by W. Darling, 1771, London. The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. This library is located in Farmington, Connecticut. (This depiction is a detail from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact the library for an accurate image.)

A Fashionable Lady in Dress & Undress. The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. This library is located in Farmington, Connecticut. (This depiction is a detail from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact the library for an accurate image.)

Fashion 1796. The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. This library is located in Farmington, Connecticut. (This depiction is a detail from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact the library for an accurate image.)

Charles Catton (1728-1798). Norfolk Museums & Archeological Service. (This depiction is a detail from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact the museum for an accurate image.)

Fashion Before Ease. The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. This library is located in Farmington, Connecticut. (This depiction is a detail from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact the library for an accurate image.)

Powdering the Wig. The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. This library is located in Farmington, Connecticut. (This depiction is a detail from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact the library for an accurate image.)

Beauty and Fashion. Publish'd 24th Jany 1797, by Laurie & Whittle, 53, Fleet Street, London.The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. This library is located in Farmington, Connecticut. (This depiction is a detail from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact the library for an accurate image.)

Lady Preparing for Masquerade. The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. This library is located in Farmington, Connecticut. (This depiction is a detail from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact the library for an accurate image.)

Lady at her Toilet. The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. This library is located in Farmington, Connecticut. (This depiction is a detail from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact the library for an accurate image.)

1777 Old Free Method of Rouzing a Brother Sportsman. Carrington Bowles, London.

1784 The Stay Maker Taking a Pleasing Circumference. London.

The Last Shift. Carrington Bowles, London.











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Jumat, 08 Mei 2009

Paintings of Martha Washington

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Well, I hesitate to dip into this discussion, but we just can't ignore paintings of Martha Dandridge Custis Washington (1731-1802). Martha was painted more than any other 18th century woman in America during her lifetime.

On February 4, 2009, the Washington Post published a portrait of Martha painted by Michael J. Deas as the cover of a 2005 book about Martha by Patricia Brady, a Tulane PhD. Because Martha burned her correspondence with her husband at his death; there are scant primary sources to use as tools to reconstruct her feelings & thoughts.

The recent, ahistorical portrait of Martha prompted Post writer, Brigid Schulte, to announce that Martha was actually "hot," and not the "frumpy, dumpy, plump old lady" we all picture. She even added the tantalizing revelation that while George was courting her, Martha had another suitor, a Virginia planter with much greater wealth & stature. In a little-known letter, Charles Carter wrote to his brother about what a beauty she was & how he hoped to "arouse a flame in her breast."

The titillating newspaper article & Brady's book are geared toward 21st century sensibilities and commercial sales, not toward 18th century expectations or realities.

The new portrait was based on CSI-type age regression from the James Peale (1749-1831) miniature portrait of Martha by forensic anthropologists at the Louisiana State University Forensic Anthropology and Computer Enhancement Services, or FACES, Laboratory.

Deas painted the face that the lab came up with onto an imaginary perfect body of a 21st-century-anorexic-top-model-type completely transforming the "the mousy, fat widow that dashing and virile Washington married only for money."

The 18th century ideal looked for women with soft, plump faces & graceful arms extending from softly sloping shoulders held well back giving the body an elegant serpentine S line. Today's female ideal is one with a thin face & sharp facial features & hands, and protruding collarbones announcing an athletic, buff body type.

Reactions to the portrait of the new Martha-makeover may be even more startling. Brady states that the normally controlled (exceptions are allowed here for his interactions with the newly-married young Lafayette & Sally Fairfax, the wife of his best friend) George was "clearly sexually excited by her" (Martha, that is). Brady based her insight on 2 letters from George that escaped Martha's fire. Both were written as he commanded the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. The warm letters addressed her as "My dearest."

Edward Lengel, senior editor at the extraordinary primary source Papers of George Washington project at the University of Virginia, discreetly declared that "she was quite a beautiful woman in her younger years, and Washington loved her deeply." Lengel recently discovered a rare letter from Martha to George in 1777, where she calls him "My Love."

"There's enough circumstantial evidence really to show that they were very close,
" Lengel genteely noted. James Flexner, an earlier 20th century Washington biographer, called Martha's letters "an incoherent jumble of affection and gossip."

The Mount Vernon Ladies Association, always keen managers of the Washington legacy, bought the Deas portrait & promptly enshrined it with a reproduction of Martha's wedding gown in their education center, a respectable distance from the 18th century house.

Emily Shapiro, curator at Mount Vernon, took the Post reporter on a tour of the Martha images at Mount Vernon explaining that most are of "as one historian describes it, of the double-chinned Old Mother Hubbard variety." Shapiro theorized that the dowdy white-haired images, painted shortly after both George & Martha had died, fostered a sense of legitimacy for the fledgling country.

The paintings on this post will be only those painted during Martha's lifetime.

Shapiro showed the Washington Post reporter the case displaying Martha's reproduction once sparkly purple wedding shoes, which she and Mount Vernon Executive Director James Rees described as a little sassy & definitely "over the top" for the time, which is exactly the way that I would describe the new Deas portrait. But perhaps that is because I am a frumpy, dumpy, plump, double-chinned Old Mother Hubbard variety of historian.

This is the biography of Martha Dandridge Custis Washington from the White House website.

"I think I am more like a state prisoner than anything else, there is certain bounds set for me which I must not depart from..." So in one of her surviving letters, Martha Washington confided to a niece that she did not entirely enjoy her role as first of First Ladies. She once conceded that "many younger and gayer women would be extremely pleased" in her place; she would "much rather be at home."

But when George Washington took his oath of office in New York City on April 30, 1789, and assumed the new duties of President of the United States, his wife brought to their position a tact and discretion developed over 58 years of life in Tidewater Virginia society.

Oldest daughter of John and Frances Dandridge, she was born June 2, 1731, on a plantation near Williamsburg. Typical for a girl in an 18th-century family, her education was almost negligible except in domestic and social skills, but she learned all the arts of a well-ordered household and how to keep a family contented.

As a girl of 18--about five feet tall, dark-haired, gentle of manner--she married the wealthy Daniel Parke Custis. Two babies died; two were hardly past infancy when her husband died in 1757.

From the day Martha married George Washington in 1759, her great concern was the comfort and happiness of her husband and children. When his career led him to the battlegrounds of the Revolutionary War and finally to the Presidency, she followed him bravely. Her love of private life equaled her husband's; but, as she wrote to her friend Mercy Otis Warren, "I cannot blame him for having acted according to his ideas of duty in obeying the voice of his country." As for herself, "I am still determined to be cheerful and happy, in whatever situation I may be; for I have also learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances."

At the President's House in temporary capitals, New York and Philadelphia, the Washingtons chose to entertain in formal style, deliberately emphasizing the new republic's wish to be accepted as the equal of the established governments of Europe. Still, Martha's warm hospitality made her guests feel welcome and put strangers at ease. She took little satisfaction in " formal compliments and empty ceremonies" and declared that "I am fond of only what comes from the heart." Abigail Adams, who sat at her right during parties and receptions, praised her as "one of those unassuming characters which create Love and Esteem."

In 1797 the Washingtons said farewell to public life and returned to their beloved Mount Vernon, to live surrounded by kinfolk, friends, and a constant stream of guests eager to pay their respects to the celebrated couple. Martha's daughter Patsy had died, as had her son Jack at 26, but Jack's children figured in the household. After George Washington died in 1799, Martha assured a final privacy by burning their letters; she died of "severe fever" on May 22, 1802. Both lie buried at Mount Vernon, where Washington himself had planned an unpretentious tomb for them.

1757 John Wollaston (1710-1775) Martha Dandridge (Daniel Parke Custis) (Mrs George Washington) Washington and Lee. (This depiction is from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact Washington and Lee for an accurate image.)

1789-96 Edward Savage (1761-1817). The Washington Family (detail). National Gallery of Art. (This depiction is from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact the national gallery for an accurate image.)
1790 Edward Savage (1761-1817). Martha Washington. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Adams National Historic Site, Quincey, Massachusettes. (Reproduction at FoundersofAmerica.com. Contact the Adams site for an accurate image.)
1791-2 Archibald Robertson (1765-1835). Martha Washington. Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. (This depiction is from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact CWF for an accurate image.)
1793 John Trumbull (1756-1843). Martha Washington. National Museum of Amrican History, Washington D.C. (This depiction is from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact the museum for an accurate image.)
1795 Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827). Martha Washington. Virginia Historical Society, Richmond. (This depiction is from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact the VHS for an accurate image.)

1796 Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828). Martha Washington. National Portrait Gallery and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. (Reproduction at bestpriceart.com. Contact the portrait gallery for an accurate image.)
1796 James Peale ( 1749-1831). Martha Washington. The Mount Vernon Ladies Association. (This depiction is from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact Mount Vernon for an accurate image.)
1796 James Sharples (1751-1811). Martha Washington. (This depiction is from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce.)

1800 Martha Washington. National Portrait Gallery. (This depiction is from a lecture slide. Do not copy or reproduce. Contact the museum for an accurate image.)
2004 Michael J. Deas. Martha Washington. Mount Vernon Ladies Association. (Contact the Mount Vernon Ladies Association for an accurate image.)

























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