Strategies for Showing: Women, Possession, and Representation in English Visual Culture, 1665-1800In this unusual and original study, Marcia Pointon examines the cultural effects and consequences of the participation by women in acts of representation in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. She explores their lives and work, and a cultural environment in which images of female saints and goddesses established indices of femininity in the homes of wealthy men. Did the women portrayed also possess artefacts, and did they use the power of gifts and bequests to determine social relations? Did they themselves participate in the processes of creating images of the seen world? Pointon sets out to answer some of these questions through a series of novel and vividly recounted case studies of women such as Emma Hamilton, wife and mistress; Mary Moser, the artist; Dorothy Richardson, the antiquarian. She shows that the relationship of these women to the world of consumption was affective and imaginative as well as economic. |
Common terms and phrases
aforesaid allegory artists Bacchante bequeath unto BL Add British brother century church Culture Dame daughter dear death decease diamond discourse dispose Dorothy Richardson Dowager Earl eighteenth Eighteenth-Century England Elizabeth Harley Emma Hamilton English engraved esquire executors exhibited female ffather ffifty pounds ffrancis ffuneral Gallery give and bequeath give and devise give unto Grace guineas Harewood House heirs hereby History Honble hundred pounds husband Hymen interest Item I give John late legacies linnen living London Lord Maria Cosway marriage Mary Moser Matthew William Peters mourning Museum natural Oxford paid parish payment personal estate Peters picture Polite portrait portraiture pounds I give PROB Proved quire representation Reynolds's right honourable ring Robert Harley Royal Academy saints servant sexual Signed silver Sir Joshua Reynolds Sir William Hamilton sister Society St Cecilia Thaïs thereof Thomas tours twenty pounds wife William woman women writing