18C Women Around the World

Costumes de Differents Pays, by Jacques Grasset de Saint-Sauveur (France, 1757-1810) c 1797 Hand-Colored Engraving from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

By the end of the 18C, worldwide exploration & colonization by Europeans were fairly commonplace, enabling the late 18C & 19C public to catch a glimpse of the clothing & customs of other peoples.

Changing Women's Fashion! - Jean-Baptiste Le Prince 1734-1781 paints Turquerie

Jean-Baptiste Le Prince (French Painter, 1734-1781) Young woman in Turkish costume


Born to a family of ornamental sculptors & gilders, Le Prince began studying art with Francois Boucher (1703–70) around 1750. In 1754, the young artist traveled to Italy.  By 1757, Le Prince was painting for Catherine the Great at the Imperial Palace in Saint Petersburg. He traveled extensively in Russia, Lithuania, Finland, Holland, & perhaps Siberia, returning to Paris 5 years later eager to make a name for himself.  

The sketches Le Prince made on his travels of exotic costumes & customs served him well, when he returned to France in 1763.  He became a copper engraver, & a genre, landscape & portrait painter. He is also credited with being the first artist to introduce aquatint into his etched & engraved plates. Upon becoming a member of the Académie Royale in 1765, Le Prince exhibited 15 paintings at that year's Salon, all Russian subjects.  The drawings he made in Russia provided the basis for a considerable body of work that added to the general taste of 18th century Europeans for exotica.   

After 1770, Le Prince's health declined, & he left Paris for the French countryside.  There he painted the pastoral subjects; which he had learned from Boucher as a young man & from the 17th-century Dutch & Flemish genre & landscape painters, which he so admired.

Jean-Baptiste Le Prince (French Painter, 1734-1781) Lady in Turkish Dress

Jean-Baptiste Le Prince (French Painter, 1734-1781) The Fortune Teller

18C Women Around the World

Costumes de Differents Pays, by Jacques Grasset de Saint-Sauveur (France, 1757-1810) c 1797 Hand-Colored Engraving from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

By the end of the 18C, worldwide exploration & colonization by Europeans were fairly commonplace, enabling the late 18C & 19C public to catch a glimpse of the clothing & customs of other peoples.

Women Sharing the Harvest - 18C Foods at Market & at Home

Adriaan de Lelie (Dutch artist, 1755-1820)

Jan Antoon Garemijn (Dutch painter, 1712-1799) The Market in Bruges 1778

Johann Zoffany (German-born English painter, 1733-1810) Florentine Fruit Stand

John Atkinson (British artist, fl 1770-1775) British  Girl Bundling Asparagus 1771

John S C Schaak (British artist, fl. Westminster 1761-1769) Tavern Interior 1762

Justus Juncker (Dutch artist, 1703-1767) In the Kitchen

Justus Juncker (Dutch artist, 1703-1767) The Maid in the Kitchen

Justus Juncker (Dutch artist, 1703-1767) Working in the Kitchen

Pehr Hilleström (Swedish artist, 1732-1816) A Lady at the Hearth

Molly Milton, the pretty oyster Woman Carrington Bowles 1788

Unknown artist, Curds and Whey Seller c 1725-35

Sausage Woman at Covent Garden Robert Sayer 1772

Abraham van Strij (Dutch artist, 1753-1826) Cleaning up in the Kitchen

18C Women Around the World

Costumes de Differents Pays, by Jacques Grasset de Saint-Sauveur (France, 1757-1810) c 1797 Hand-Colored Engraving from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

By the end of the 18C, worldwide exploration & colonization by Europeans were fairly commonplace, enabling the late 18C & 19C public to catch a glimpse of the clothing & customs of other peoples.

Doing the Laundry - 18-19C Scotland

Scotch Washing at Scotland's Castle Boins or Boynes - Glasgow Green

Over the centuries, generations of Glasgow women used the Glasgow Green to undertake one of the most arduous of domestic chores - washing the clothes.  Apparently, Scotch washing wasn't confined to Glasgow. 

Castle Boins was an area on the banks of the Camlachie Burn, near to St. Andrew's-by-the-Green Episcopal Church, which was particularly popular with them. Eventually, a small enclosure of this name, which provided some degree of shelter during the operation, was located on the south bank of the burn. 

This became something of a forerunner to the Wash House on the Green which was later provided by the Town Council in c 1733. The unusual name attaching to the location was derived from the hundreds of tubs, or boynes as they were known, found there in which the women treaded their washing.

The locality even became something of a very early tourist attraction because of the method of washing known as Scotch Washing. With their skirts and petticoats raised out of harm's way, the exposure of their limbs was considered immodest by the more prudish of the day. The women themselves are reported to have been less concerned with the spectacle than with trying to do their work, although in 2 of the 18C illustrations in this posting shows one very interested observer Tom being threatened with a paddle.

Castle Boins also developed into something of a social venue where folk would gather for a drink. Part of the area was eventually incorporated into David Dale’s tavern garden. It’s use as a washing area was finally ended, when the river became too polluted to provide a source of clean water.

18C Women Around the World

Costumes de Differents Pays, by Jacques Grasset de Saint-Sauveur (France, 1757-1810) c 1797 Hand-Colored Engraving from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

By the end of the 18C, worldwide exploration & colonization by Europeans were fairly commonplace, enabling the late 18C & 19C public to catch a glimpse of the clothing & customs of other peoples.

Picnics with both Men & Women occurred after the Hunt in the 18C

1737 Carle or Charles-André van Loo (1705-1765) After the Hunt

"Picnic. Originally, A fashionable social entertainment in which each person present contributed a share of the provisions." The OED traces the oldest print evidence of the word picnic in the English language to 1748. The word was known in France, Germany, and Sweden prior to becoming an English institution. 
---Oxford English Dictionary [Clarendon Press:Oxford], 2nd edition, Volume XI (p. 779)

Food historians tell us picnics evolved from the elaborate traditions of outdoor feasts enjoyed by the wealthy. Medieval hunting feasts & Renaissance-era country banquets probably were the earliest picnics.

1738 Carle or Charles-André van Loo (1705-1765) The Picnic after the Hunt

"The earliest picnics in England were medieval hunting feasts. Hunting conventions were established in the 14C, and the feast before the chase assumed a special importance. Gaston de Foiz, in a work entitled Le Livre de chasse (1387), gives a detailed description of such an event in France. As social habits in 14C England were similar to those in medieval France, it is safe to assume that picnics were more or less the same."  
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 602)

 1737 Nicolas Lancret (1690-1743)  The Hunting Party Meal

"The French might have invented the word "picnic," pique nique being found earlier than "pic nic." It originally referred to a dinner, usually eaten indoors, to which everyone present had contributed some food, and possible also a fee to attend. The ancient Greek "eranos," the French "moungetade" described earlier, or modern "pot luck" suppers are versions of this type of mealtime organization. ...Picnics derive, also, from the decorous yet comparatively informal 16C "banquets"...whichh frequently took place out of doors."
---The Rituals of Dinner: The Origins, Evolutions, Eccentricities and Meaning of Table Manners, Margaret Visser [Penguin:New York] 1991 (p. 150-1)

1740 Nicolas Lancret (1690-1743) Picnic after the hunt

"Picnic. An informal meal in which everyone pays his share or brings his own dish,' according to the Littre dictionary. That was probably the original meaning of the word, which is probably of French origin (the French piquer means to pick at food; nique means something small of no value.) The word was accepted by the Academie francaise in 1740 and thereafter became a universally accepted word in many languages. From the informal picnic, the outdoor feast developed...Weekend shooting parties and sporting events were occasions for grand picnics, with extensive menus and elaborate presentation."
---Larousse Gastronomique, completely updated and revised edition [Clarkson Potter:New York] 2001 (p. 883)

18C Women Around the World

Costumes de Differents Pays, by Jacques Grasset de Saint-Sauveur (France, 1757-1810) c 1797 Hand-Colored Engraving from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

By the end of the 18C, worldwide exploration & colonization by Europeans were fairly commonplace, enabling the late 18C & 19C public to catch a glimpse of the clothing & customs of other peoples.

18C London Women & The Macaroni

Detail. M. Darly, Macaroni Dressing Room, London, June 26, 1772.

Between 1760 and 1800, enterprising London engravers & printmakers produced and marketed hundreds of mezzotint prints aimed at the growing popular market (comprised mostly of the urban middling sort) who were hungry for affordable prints.

Often these mezzotints, also called drolls, were humorous or satirical and were almost always created in a small 10 x 14 inch format which could be easily and cheaply framed. They were advertised in contemporary print catalogues and easily fit into a print shop display window or into a portfolio case. A traditional mezzotint print would sell for about 8 shillings. A colored droll would be only 2 shillings, and these mezzotints uncolored would cost 1 shilling.

Spectators at a Print Shop. Carrington Bowles. London. 1774. New York Public Library.

One of the targets of mezzotint satire was a macaroni (or earlier maccaroni), which in mid-18th-century England referred to a fashionable fellow who dressed & spoke in an outlandishly affected manner. The term pejoratively referred to a man who exceeded the ordinary bounds of fashion in terms of clothing, dining, speech, & entertainment.

The Marcaroni Print Shop (The shop of Mary & Matthew Darly).

Young Englishmen who had traveled to Italy on the Grand Tour often adopted the Italian word maccherone — a boorish fool in Italian — and called anything that seemed fashionable "very macaroni."

London Print Shop of William Humphrey (c.1740-c.1810).

In 1764 Horace Walpole mentioned “The Maccaroni Club (which is composed of all the travelled young men who wear long curls and spying-glasses).” A writer in the Oxford Magazine wrote in 1770, “There is indeed a kind of animal, neither male nor female, a thing of the neuter gender, lately started up amongst us. It is called Macaroni. It talks without meaning, it smiles without pleasantry, it eats without appetite, it rides without exercise, it wenches without passion.”

Courtship for Money. Philip Dawe Fecit. for John Bowles, London. 1772.

The song “Yankee Doodle,” popular during the American Revolutionary War, mentions a man who "stuck a feather in his hat and called it macaroni." The terms dandy (from the song) and fop also referred to fancy, fashionable gentlemen. At least 2 of the mezzotints focusing on macaronis depict well-dressed young men declaring their undying love to rather homely older women for their money.

Courtship for Money. Carington Bowles, London 1772.

Engravers & printsellers Mary & Matthew Darly in the fashionable west End of London sold sets of satirical "macaroni" caricature prints, between 1771 & 1773. Because of its location & merchandise, the Darly print shop became known as "The Macaroni Print-Shop."

The austerity, anger, & abridged trade of the American Revolution dampened the desire for these mezzotints during the late 1770-80s on both sides of the Atlantic. By the 1790s, the leading droll printsellers, Robert Sayer (1725-1794) and Carington Bowles (1724-1793), were handing their businesses and stock over to others.

By 1800, the enthusiasm for the mezzotint droll was exhausted, soon to be replaced by other emerging engraving techniques, such as stipple and aquatint, as the media favored for the popular print market. Lithography was invented by Alois Senefelder (1771-1834) in Germany around 1798. In 1811, Senefelder published The Invention of Lithography, which was soon translated into English, French, & Italian, and the popularity of the technique soared.

18C Women Around the World

Costumes de Differents Pays, by Jacques Grasset de Saint-Sauveur (France, 1757-1810) c 1797 Hand-Colored Engraving from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

By the end of the 18C, worldwide exploration & colonization by Europeans were fairly commonplace, enabling the late 18C & 19C public to catch a glimpse of the clothing & customs of other peoples.

17C English Women during the English Civil War by Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677) in 1641

 

 Hollar, a Czech etcher, was born in 1607, the son of an upper middle-class civic official. Very little is known about his early life, but he evidently learned the rudiments of his craft by age 18, left his native Prague at age 20, & likely studied in Frankfurt under Matthaus Merian. His 1st book of etchings was published in 1635, in Cologne when Hollar was 28. The following year he came to the attention of the renowned art collector the Earl of Arundel who was making an official visit to the continent, & Hollar subsequently became a part of his household, settling in England early in 1637. 

He remained in England during the beginning of the English Civil War period, but left London for Antwerp in 1642, where he continued to work on a variety of projects.

 In 1652 he returned to England, working on a number of large projects for the publisher John Ogilby & for the antiquary Sir William Dugdale. Hollar was in London during the Great Fire of 1666, & remains most famous for his scenes of the city before & after the fire. He was one of the most skilled etchers of his or any other time, which is all the more remarkable given that he was almost blind in one eye. Hollar died in London on 25 March 1677. By his life's end, he had produced some 2700 separate etchings.