‘Artful Nature: Fashion and Theatricality 1770–1830’, Lewis Walpole Library, Farmington, USA, 6 February–13 March 2020

Abstract

The period 1770 to 1830 witnessed a ‘revolution’ in fashion in western Europe. This was typified by the introduction of the women’s gauzy neoclassical gown, the sleekness of which starkly contrasted with the expansive paniers of the preceding century. It was this period of sartorial transition that formed the focus for the Lewis Walpole Library’s exhibition ‘Artful Nature: Fashion and Theatricality 1770–1830’. Like so many exhibitions in 2020, ‘Artful Nature’ was forced to close earlier than intended as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, curators Laura Engel and Amelia Rauser have created a comprehensive online resource, which is the subject of this review, enabling a global audience to view the exhibit. The website provides multiple images of each object on display, with links to the item description in the museum’s online database. There is also a short film by the curators discussing exhibition highlights and an accompanying brochure is available to download. The physical exhibition fitted into one room at the Walpole Library, but nevertheless contained a wealth of content that has translated well to the online context. While the online exhibition is no substitute for in-person visits, viewers can perhaps take in more information as they browse the website at their leisure, rather than jostling for space with other visitors. Divided between six thematic sections, ‘Artful Nature’ considers the blurring of boundaries between ‘naturalism’ in women’s dress and behaviour in the age of sensibility, and the art required to create an apparently ‘natural’ aesthetic. The display draws on the interdisciplinary backgrounds of its two curators: Rauser has published on political satire and fashion in eighteenth-century Europe and is the author of The Age of Undress (Yale, 2020); literary historian Engel has written extensively on actresses as fashion icons. Theatricality is an integral part of this exhibition, which argues that the acting profession embodied the transgressive fluidity between artifice and nature, sensibility and sexuality—a fluidity that was also a hallmark of the neoclassical gown. The engraving used to publicise the exhibition is G. M. Woodward’s Art of Fainting in Company (Fig. 1). This image aligns fashionable society with both sensibility and artifice as the young woman collapses in a staged pose which best shows off her elegant dress. The online visitor emerges with a sense of the complexities of representing femininity and fashion in this period. Engel and Rauser argue in the exhibition brochure that they aim to show how ‘women embraced the “anti-fashion” of neoclassical dress as a way to represent their own artistic agency and to deflect traditional criticisms of women as flighty, unserious, or deceptive’. While this claim is expanded upon in their lengthier publications, female agency through dress is a more subtle undertone in the images presented here. The overarching impression from the majority of male-penned images is that neoclassical style provoked intense