Strategies for Showing Women, Possession, and Representation in English Visual Culture 1665-1800

by Pointon, Marcia

• ISBN13: 9780198174110
• ISBN10: 019817411X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-03-06
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

In 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 artifacts, 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, and Dorothy Richardson, the antiquarian.

Author Biography

Marcia Pointon is Pilkington Professor of the History of Art, University of Manchester.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. vii
Introduction	p. 1
Notes	p. 12
Purchasing and Consuming Elizabeth Harley. . . and Others	p. 15
Notes	p. 49
Marriage and Its Boundaries The Montgomery Sisters Adorning A Term of Hymen	p. 59
Notes	p. 83
Abundant Leisure And Extensive Knowledge Dorothy Richardson Delineates	p. 89
Notes	p. 124
Working, Earning, Bequeathing Mary Grace and Mary Moser -- 'Paintresses'	p. 131
Notes	p. 165
Portraiture, Excess, and Mythology Mary Hale, Emma Hamilton, And Others . . . 'In Bacchante'	p. 173
Notes	p. 221
Protestants and 'Fair Penitents' With Special Reference to St Cecilia	p. 229
Notes	p. 295
Appendix: An Anthology of Wills Relating to Women's Property 1739-1760	p. 307
Bibliography	p. 401
Index	p. 423
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