There's just a little more than a month left to see the Brilliant Women: 18-Century Bluestockings exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. It considers the importance of the intellectual British women who formed the "Bluestocking Circle." This includes female writers, artists, and thinkers who helped to push the boundaries of female accomplishment in the 18th-Century. It is not a vast exhibition, but like the women included, it makes a quick and hard impact.
While it is not specifically a fashion exhibition, it does the subject some justice. Even the title of "Bluestockings" has its origin in fashions. Boswell relates this origin in his
Life of Dr Johnson on 23 April 1781, writing:
'These societies were denominated Blue-stocking Clubs, the origin of which title being little known, it may be worth while to relate it. One of the most eminent members of those societies when they first commenced was Mr Stillingfleet (Benjamin Stillingfleet, author of tracts relating to natural history, etc.) whose dress was remarkably grave, and in particular, it was observed, that he wore blue stockings. Such was the excellence of his conversation, that his absence was felt as so great a loss, that it used to be said, "We can do nothing with the
Blue-Stockings" ; and thus by degrees the title was established.'
Blue stockings were meant for those of the working class, rather than the white stockings of a gentleman, and Stillingfleet earned this reputation when he absent-mindedly appeared in them at his first invitation to Elizabeth Montagu's salon. Thus, the exhibition coyly begins with a portrait of Stillingfleet.
My favourite piece exhibited is Richard Samuel's
Portraits in the Characters of the Muses in the Temple of Apollo (The nine living muses of Great Britain) (1778). Placing women of great achievement in such clothing shows how historical dress in portraiture was not merely a fashionable trend for the classical via the emerging Republics. It also presents how classical dress could be used for its symbolic heroism to represent the growing number of female Intellectuals and the growing respect for them as creative producers.
Another portrait in the exhibition, which forms an interesting discourse on the actual
importance of fashion for a group of women who frequently dismissed it as an idle extravagance, is Frances Reynolds' (Joshua Reynolds' sister) portrait of Hannah More (1780). More is depicted in a state of undress while writing, as a 'Man of Letters' would be. While as a converted evangelical Christian she believed women were still subordinate to men, she also believed that intelligence and philanthropy were the duty of women. Therefore, although she was not a women's rights supporter, it is her dress as the new 'Woman of Letters' that displays the changing and developing role of female intellectuals at the time. Mary Moser, one of the two female founders of the Royal Academy, uses dress in a portrait by George Romney (1770-1) to assume the same male status as More, by being depicted in painter's robes at her easel, as was tradition for portraits of male artists.
Alternatively, historian Catherine Macaulay, who pushed the boundaries of women's r
ights both in her personal life and through her printed radical political tracts and histories, shows the same gender changes in her portraits. In Robert Edge Pine's portrait of Macaulay (1775), she is presented as statuesque and likened to an elected Roman senator, dressed with the necessary 'stola' and purple sash, though it was a position she could not actually assume. However, her damaged reputation created equally negative representations. The exhibition includes a caricature criticising her feminine vanity by Matthew Darly titled
A Speedy and Effectual Preparation for the Next World. A skeleton stands behind her, while her elaborate hairstyle is decorated with a hearse, reminding the viewer of the futility of earthly pleasures.
In addition to portraiture, the exhibition also includes a great deal of texts. In supplement to the poetry and novels of women like Fanny Burney, Hannah More, Anna Seward, and Ann Yearsley, copies of publications like
The Female Spectator reveal the reach to which these intellectual women touched fashion, modes, and manners. It creates a delightful contextualization for the images and women.
While the exhibition incorporates the later 'Brilliant Women', like Catharine Macaulay and Mary Wollstonecraft, being housed in the National Portrait Gallery it allows visitors to venture onto other floors to view the future women influenced by these revolutionaries, such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the Brontes, or even those of the Bloomsbury Group.
I left desperately wanting to gather a group of my contemporaries for tea in a salon to discuss our own situations. For further reading on the Blue-Stockings try the NPG's publication
Brilliant Women: 18th-Century Blue-Stockings by Elizabeth Eger and Lucy Peltz (2008) or
Women in Print: Writing, Women & Women's Magazines From the Restoration to the Accession of Victoria by Alison Adburgham (1972). And of course don't forget the actual work of the "Brilliant Women", including Mary Wollenstonecraft's
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Ann Yearsley's
Poems, On Several Occasions (1785), Anna Seward's
Original Sonnets (1799), and Fanny Burney's
The Witlings (1779).
Kendall Robbins
