Thursday, August 6, 2009

Charles Hunt - Dressing Up


1869
oil on canvas
13 3/4 x 9.5"
.
1829 - 1900.

4 comments:

Lucy Corrander said...

Complete with moustache!

What fun!

Could have been surreal but isn't.

Haven't seen a painting like it.

Lucy

Hermes said...

Not quite like this. Bur amateur dramatics and little plays were a Big thing for the Victorians and earlier. Its central to the plot of Mansfield Park for instance.

Lucy Corrander said...

It was complicated though.

It's a long time since I read Cranford by Mrs Gaskell but I think I remember that one of the sorrows of the women in the story was that the brother of one of them was banished abroad for dressing up as a woman for a joke.

I'm wondering whether this is why the boy in this painting is given a moustache as well as feminine clothing . . . to show he isn't really effeminate - or whether the opposite is true, that the mix of masculine and feminine was a daring choice of subject for a Victorian painting.

Lucy

Hermes said...

Hi Lucy,
not sure I can answer your very good points but by coincidence I am quite interested in Steampunk fiction and just to show it still goes on (though not by me):

http://brassgoggles.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=15347.0