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~ Confessions of a Known Bonnet-Wearer

Kitty Calash

Tag Archives: john smibert

Hell is a Hand Basket

15 Thursday Sep 2016

Posted by kittycalash in Art Rant, Clothing, Fail, History, material culture, Research

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

18th century, 18th century clothes, art history, authenticity, baskets, Costume, dress, fashion, interpretation, John Copley, john smibert, Joseph Blackburn, portraits, Research

Gentle Reader: Remember the post on semiotics? We need to go back to that once more.

Just what are we looking at here?
copley_john-singleton-mrs-daniel-rogers-middleton-collection

John Singleton Copley.
Portrait of Mrs. Daniel Rogers (Elizabeth Gorham Rogers), 1762
50 X 40, oil on canvas.
Middleton Collection, Wake Forest University
HC1991.1.1

Hmm…. 1762. Does that dress look like 1762 to you? Or does it resemble a 17th century garment? Check out those sleeves: scallops. The shift sleeves: super full. The line of the gown at the neck: a shallow scoop. The front of the bodice: closed.

Are those the hallmarks of a typical 1762 gown in New England, England, or France? You are correct, sir: They are not.

What’s happening here? What is Copley doing, and why?

He’s making his subject look good, reflecting her wealth and status. He’s flattering her by painting her in a faux-17th century gown, a “Vandyke costume, a popular artistic convention in England related to the vogue for fancy dress and masquerade.”* 1762 seems a trifle late for this convention, but in 1757, James McArdell produces a mezzotint of Thomas Hudson’s portrait of the Duchess of Ancaster. Henry Pelham wrote to Copley in 1776 that he had purchased one of those mezzotints, suggesting their use as references for Colonial American painters. Reynolda House has a nice explication of this style of dress in the Thëus portrait they own of Mrs. Thomas Lynch, shown below.

Mrs. Thomas Lynch, oil on canvas by Jeremiah Thëus, 1755. Reynolda House, 1972.2.1

Mrs. Thomas Lynch, oil on canvas by Jeremiah Thëus, 1755. Reynolda House, 1972.2.1

There was also a convention of portraying women in “timeless draperies,” following the school of Peter Lely and Godfrey Kneller, both late 17th-century English painters who produced portraits with generalized costumes.

Lady Mary Berkely, wife of Thomas Chambers. oil on canvas by Sir Godfrey Kneller, ca. 1700. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 96.30.6

Lady Mary Berkely, wife of Thomas Chambers. oil on canvas by Sir Godfrey Kneller, ca. 1700. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 96.30.6

This portrait by Kneller (born in Germany, he worked in England) explains a lot, doesn’t it? And this timeless convention persists for some time, and the stylization of the facial features and hair is copied by English and colonial American painters. John Smibert, long familiar to many of you, was a leading practitioner of this style of portrait, and his work would have been well known to Copley and his sitters.

Mrs Samuel Browne by Smibert, RIHS 1891.2.2

Mrs Samuel Browne by Smibert, RIHS 1891.2.2

Blackburn’s portrait of Mary Sylvester adopts two conventions at once, in a way: she’s in timeless-style drapery and fancy dress as a shepherdess. Let’s remember, too, that there’s symbolism in the shepherdess imagery, referencing pastoral innocence and Mary Sylvester’s unmarried, presumably virginal, status. Don’t believe me? Read the catalog entry, written (at the very least) under the supervision of actual, degree-toting art historians.

Mary Sylvester, oil on canvas by Joseph Blackburn, 1754. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 16.68.2

Mary Sylvester, oil on canvas by Joseph Blackburn, 1754. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 16.68.2

Where does that leave us with Mrs. Rogers? She’s portrayed in what is essentially fancy dress, holding her straw hat in her left hand (much as Mary Sylvester is) with a basket over her right forearm. You will note the open work of the basket, the delicate arches and the fineness of the base. What’s in it? Something gauzy, as light as the drape around her shoulders, with a square of dark blue silk and a fine white silk ribbon. Honestly I am not entirely certain — the resolution of the image is dreadful.

But what’s NOT in the basket? A redware or pewter mug, sewing, keys, bottle, food, candy, toys, or, really, anything of a very concrete or practical nature.

Is this image a justification for carrying a [nearly empty ] basket on the streets of Boston? Of course it is–as long as you justify walking the streets of Boston in imaginary or fancy dress.

*p.106, Ribeiro, Aileen. “‘The Whole Art of Dress’: Costume in the Work of John Singleton Copley.” John Singleton Copley in America, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1995.

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Smibert Smitten

19 Wednesday Dec 2012

Posted by kittycalash in History, Museums

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

18th century clothes, Clothing, Costume, dress, fashion, john smibert, Museums, Research, resources

John Smibert made me laugh. He’s been dead since 1751, so it wasn’t easy.

The day I went to the MFA and walked into the gallery with Mrs Tyng on wall, I laughed, and said, “I know her!” while my son died a small interior death. Then I pulled up the record and image for Mrs Browne, and showed him how I knew Mrs Tyng.

Follow Smibert’s pictorial advice if you’re reenacting an American woman of means between 1729 and 1732, and you’re wearing blue silk. You may have a red silk wrapper/shawl. Your shift will show at the center front and sleeves to show off your fine linen. You look like you might be a little cold, but perhaps that explains the “I store oranges in my bodice” look.

See for yourself:

MMA, Mrs Brinley & her son

MFA, Mrs MacSparran

RIHS, Mrs Browne

MFA, Mrs Tyng

MFA, Mrs Dudley

Smith College- Mrs Erving

Smith College- Mrs Erving

 

Yale- The Bermuda Group

Yale- The Bermuda Group

After a while, you start to wonder if there was only one woman in the colonies in 1730… And then you wonder how she got into every painting…

I know, style and conventions helped create these portraits as much as Smibert’s skill. And the portraits only get weird when you do the thing that was never supposed to happen. We were never meant to see all of these portraits all together, all at once, anywhere.

h2_2010.148-1 So, what’s she wearing? Probably this dress. No, not this exact dress, though if it was same woman in all those paintings, maybe the Met does have her actual dress. (Sometimes I have these weird museum-y ideas, and that’s generally when I need a vacation or come up with a new program idea.)

The robe volante shows up in paintings of women dressing, and in informal scenes, as below. She’s clearly wearing stays, which is helpful to know, because while I knew the women in the Smibert paintings ought to be wearing stays, and they had conical torsos, the orange-smuggling look was confusing.

Galerie Dreyfus- Scène galante dans un parc, ca 1725

Galerie Dreyfus- Scène galante dans un parc, ca 1725

In fact, it confuses me still.

Seriously, the 18th century was a pretty sexy place, if you like oranges and silk.

Yale- Mrs Tyng

Yale- Mrs Tyng

Look, there’s Mrs Tyng again! She’s left the MFA and taken a chair at Yale.

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