PAINTINGS AND PORTRAITS, EFFIGIES
Archer, I. and Barron, C. eds. 1988. Hugh Alley’s Caveatt: The Markets of London in 1598. London, London Topographical Society.
The illustrations of the manuscript upon which this book is based provide a valuable visual source for costume, although the book is concerned with topics other than dress.
Arnold, J. 1978. The coronation portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, Burlington Magazine, CXX(November), 727-741.
Includes transcript of materials and other items for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth I in 1559.
Arnold, J. 1981. The "Pictur" of Elizabeth I when Princess, Burlington Magazine, CXXIII(May), 303-304.
Portrait dated 1547 linked to a letter.
Arnold, J. 1989. ‘The ‘Armada’ portraits of Queen Elizabeth’, Apollo, 129, 242-244.
Barry, Simon Robert. 1983. ‘Bronzino’s Portrait of Cosimo I in Armour’. In Burlington Magazine, 125, pp. 533-539.
Bentivegna Cappi, Ferruccia. 1962. Abbigliamento e costume nella pittura italiana: Rinascimento. Rome: Carlo Bestetti Edizioni d’Arte.
The first of a two-volume work on the history of fashion and costume viewed through Italian paintings of the fifteenth and sixteenth century. The photographs are for the most part in black and white.Bentivegna Cappi, Ferruccia. 1964. Abbigliamento e costume nella pittura italiana: Barocco e Impero. Rome: Carlo Bestetti Edizioni d’Arte.
This second volume continues the examination of the fashions of the period from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century as seen in contemporary Italian paintings.Bentley-Cranch, D. 1988. ‘Effigy and portrait in sixteenth-century Scotland’, Review of Scottish Culture, 4.
Birbari, Elizabeth. 1975. Dress in Italian Painting, 1460-1500. London: John Murray.
Bonito Fanelli, Rosalia. 1997. ‘The Textiles of Italian Renaissance Dress as Seen in Portraiture: A Semiological Interpretation’. In Bulletin de Liaison du Cieta, 74, pp. 83-95.
Bordaz, O. and C. Joannis. 1992. ‘Tissus, costumes et bijoux: invention ou réalité?’. In Les noces de Cana de Véronèse. Une oeuvre et sa restauration. Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux.
Essay in the catalogue accompanying an exhibition held at the Louvre in Paris.Brooke, X. and Crombie, D. 2003. Henry VIII Revealed: Holbein's Portrait and its Legacy, National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside.
Cataldi Gallo, Marzia. 1989. ‘Ritratto e costume: status symbol nella Genova del Seicento’. In Bolletino Ligustico, n.1, pp.82-103.
Cataldi Gallo, Marzia, ed. 2000. Arte e lusso della seta a Genova dal ‘500 al ‘700. Turin: Allemandi.
Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Palazzo Ducale and Galleria Nazionale di Palazzo Spinola in Genoa.Chrisman, K. 2001. Mary Edward's taste and high life, Costume, 35, 21-13.
Mary Edwards's eccentric taste in fashion is examined in the context of her life and her close relationship with William Hogarth. This wealthy woman first shared her life and fortune with Lord Anne Hamilton, with whom she had a son, but in May 1734, she took steps to disassociate herself and her estate from him. She spent the remaining nine years of her life overseeing the management of her estates and the upbringing of her son, encouraging Hogarth and other emerging artists, and spending enormous sums on clothing and jewelry. Hogarth's conversation piece The Edwards Hamilton Family and the portrait Miss Mary Edwards, which were completed almost a decade apart, reveal a dramatic change in Edwards's dress and deportment during that time, as the mannered pose and unremarkable attire of the former work give no hint of the vast wealth and independent spirit that dominate the latter. The works show that independence gave Edwards the cash as well as the confidence to dress as extravagantly as she pleased. Moreover, the painting Taste in High Life, which she commissioned from Hogarth in 1742 in response to jibes about her own eccentric style of dress, shows that she was notorious enough to be the subject of satire and sufficiently bold to respond to her critics.
Davanzo Poli, Doretta ed. 2005. Lampassi, damaschi e broccati nei dipinti di Pietro Longhi: Rubelli interpreta il Settecento veneziano = Lampas, damask and brocade in paintings by Pietro Longhi: Portraits of eighteenth-century Venice by Rubelli. Venice: Rubelli: Fondazione Querini Stampalia.
This is the catalogue for the exhibition that accompanied the re-opening of the Querini Stampalia museum in Venice. The textile company Rubelli S.p.A. recreated a series of eighteenth-century costumes based on styles painted by the Venetian artist Pietro Longhi. All text is provided in both English and Italian.de Winkel, M. 2006. Fashion and Fancy: Dress and Meaning in Rembrandt’s Paintings. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press.
de Marly, D. 1989. ‘The modification of gipsy dress in art, 1500-1650’, Costume, 23, 54-63.
Discusses changes in gipsy dress during the period in question, the reasons for change, and the depiction of gipsies in art.
Eger, E. and Peltz, L. 2008. Brilliant Women: 18th-Century Bluestockings. London, National Portrait Gallery.
Written to accompany an exhibition of the same title at the National Portrait Gallery in 2008 - includes many illustrations of portraits of 18th-century women.
Emberley, J. V. 1998. Venus and Furs: The Cultural Politics of Fur. London, I B Tauris.
The book aims to ‘trace the discursive and non-discursive practices that institutionalise, subvert and transgress the meanings of fur - as articles of trade, sexual fetish, commodity, sign of wealth, protective clothing - in order to understand the contest over meanings and values of fur as a struggle between people’. A wide geographical and chronological range is covered. Topics include: the paintings of furs by Titian and Holbein, and the etchings of furs by Wenceslas Hollar.
ffolliott, R. 1989-90. ‘Fashion as a guide to dating Irish portraits, 1660-1880’, The GPA Irish Arts Review Yearbook, 214-232.
Reviews the main fashion trends of the period, illustrated with many examples of Irish portraits.
French, A. ed. 1988. The Earl and Countess Howe by Gainsborough: A Bicentenary Exhibition, English Heritage.
The exhibition included a display of contemporary costume comparable to that shown in the portraits of the Earl and Countess Howe, and a live-modelled recreation of the dress depicted in Lady Howe’s portrait. The catalogue includes two essays by Aileen Ribeiro on the artist’s use of dress.
Gent, L. and Llewellyn, N., eds. 1990. Renaissance Bodies: the Human Figure in English Culture. London, Reaktion Books.
Gordenker, E. E. S. 1999. ‘Is the history of dress marginal? Some thoughts on costume in seventeenth-century painting’, Fashion Theory, 3(2), 219-240.
This article introduces some of the problems and challenges facing the historian of dress when looking at Dutch and Flemish art. It addresses three specific examples of seventeenth-century paintings in which the costume has been overlooked, misinterpreted or misunderstood: a servant’s costume in ‘The Kitchen Maid’ by Joachim Wtewael, Anthony van Dyck’s portrayal of male dress; the painter’s attire in Johannes Vermeer’s ‘Art of Painting’. In each case, the discussion not only deals with surviving garments, but with their representation and an awareness of how they would have been worn. In doing so, the importance, as well as some of the pitfalls, of writing about past fashions emerge.
Gordenker, E. E. S. 2001. Van Dyck and the Representation of Dress in Seventeenth-Century Portraiture. Turnhout, Brepols.
Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641) introduced a new type of costume in his portraits during his second English period (1632-1641), one that blurred the margins of fact and fancy. He used costume to forge a complex and memorable image of his English patrons, the Caroline courtiers, one that captured their ideals and yet had resonance for many years after his death. Van Dyck established new conventions for the representation of dress in portraits that held sway until the end of the seventeenth century. Later generations of English, Dutch, and French painters, used Van Dyck´s innovations as a touchstone for a new manner of dressing sitters, one that was partially fictional, and much more casual and unbuttoned than had ever been represented before. This book shows that an understanding of dress can offer a new way of revealing the associations and ideals that a portait may have projected, and that the history of costume provides a unique set of tools with which to analyze the creativity and contributions of Van Dyck.
Harvey, A. and Mortimer, R., eds. 2003. The Funeral Effigies of Westminster Abbey. New York, Boydell.
The funeral effigies housed in their own quarters in the Norman undercroft are one of the most remarkable yet little-known treasures of Westminster abbey. They derive from a time when an effigy of the dead monarch, statesman or national hero played an important part in funeral ritual, offering a visible likeness as a focus to the ceremonial of the funeral. Surprisingly moving when gathered together, this unexpected pantheon of celebrities includes remarkable medieval wood effigies and later wax figures in contemporary clothing. Among the unique and important group of portrait busts, the death mask of Edward III (1377) dates back to the beginnings of portraiture in medieval Europe; other fine examples include Henry VII, Charles II, Pitt, and Nelson. The collection is also remarkable for its rare historic costumes, including Charles II's Garter robes, Nelson's hat, extraordinary Georgian paste jewellery, rare early silks and shoes, and probably the oldest stuffed bird in England. Some objects are illustrated in this book for the first time, others since their damage in the last war and subsequent restoration. An account of the restoration, a history of the collection, and a discussion of the significance of each object accompany the detailed descriptions of the effigies. This book is the first substantial publication on the funeral effigies of Westminster Abbey since 1936.
Hayes, J. 1991. The Portrait in British Art. London, National Portrait Gallery.
Catalogue of an exhibition held at the National Portrait Gallery 1991-1992. Covers the period from the early seventeenth to the early twentieth century.
Hearn, K. 1995. Dynasties: Painting in Tudor and Jacobean England 1530-1630. London, Tate Gallery.
Exhibition catalogue with numerous colour plates.
Hearn, K. 2000. A fatal fertility? Elizabethan and Jacobean pregnancy portraits, Costume, 34, 39-43.
Hearn discusses Elizabethan and Jacobean portraits of pregnant women as evidence of maternity wear at this time. In English art of the 16th and early 17th centuries, there seems to have been a tendency for ladies to be depicted as clearly pregnant, with the main body of such portraits apparently dating from the late 1580s to around 1630. However, it is possible that the attire depicted in this group of portraits may not in reality have taken the form depicted; what may be shown is the sitter's richest formal attire, loosely draped over their bulging belly for the purpose of the portrait alone--a way that it may not have been worn in reality.
Holdsworth, S. and Crossley, J. 1992. Innocence and Experience: Images of Childhood in British Art from 1600 to the Present. Manchester, Manchester City Art Galleries.
A fully illustrated catalogue of an exhibition shown at Manchester, Hull, Nottingham and Glasgow, 1992-1993.
Hollander, A. 2002. Fabric of Vision: Dress and Drapery in Painting. London, National Gallery.
The role played by costume and drapery was examined in this innovative exhibition curated by the costume historian Anne Hollander. It showed how artists, from the Middle Ages to the 20th century, have used clothing and drapery - real and imagined, sacred and secular - to give emphasis and emotional force to their figures. The exhibition included works by van der Weyden, Tintoretto, Van Dyck, Reynolds, Delacroix, Tissot, Vuillard and Picasso.
Ingamells, J. 1981. The English Episcopal Portrait 1559-1835: A Catalogue. London, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.
Includes indices of artists and collections, and a chronology of English bishops.
Johns, C. M. S. 2004. Portraiture and the making of cultural identity: Pompeo Batoni's "The Honourable Colonel William Gordon" (1765-66) in Italy and North Britain, Art History, 27(3), 382-411.
The writer situates Pompeo Batoni's 1765-66 portrait The Honourable Colonel William Gordon within the context of debates about 18th-century Scotland and Scots cultural and national identity. He examines the flamboyant pose in the painting; the martial and imperialist connotations of the conjunction between the colonel and a statue of Roma; and Gordon's unusual attire, which combines English military dress with the belted plaid associated with the Jacobite rebellion. He discusses the portrait as a complex visualization of the ambiguity felt by many privileged Scots about the union with England. He considers the portrait within Enlightenment debates about Scotland as a "primitive" land and as a center of intellectual and cultural achievement.
Kidwell, C. 1998. ‘Are those clothes real? Transforming the way eighteenth-century portraits are studied’, Dress, 24, 3-15.
The author examines the contradictions among several contributors to an important exhibition catalogue of the work of the American artist, John Singleton Copley, published in 1996, and discusses how far the clothes shown are real, before going on to propose a material culture model to use when studying such portraits.
Lack, W., Stuchfield, M., et al. 1994. The Monumental Brasses of Buckinghamshire. London, Monumental Brass Society.
Descriptions of brasses from the fourteenth to the twentieth century are given, together with source materials and workshop styles. Figure brasses before 1700 are illustrated, providing valuable evidence for the history of armour and dress (including ecclesiastical dress).
Langedijk, Karla. 1987. Portraits of the Medici, Fifteenth to Eighteenth Centuries. Florence: S.P.E.S.
Laver, J., ed. 1951. Costume Illustration: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. London, H.M.S.O.
Monochrome plates of many items in the Department of Prints and Drawings, Victoria and Albert Museum.
Lovell, M. M. 1998. ‘Mrs Sargent, Mr Copley, and the empirical eye’, Winterthur Portfolio, 33, 1-39.
The author discusses in great detail three paintings by John Singleton Copley, in which women wear the same dress, and discusses the reasons why they might have chosen to be painted in it.
Marshall, R. and Dalgleish, G. eds. 1991. The Art of Jewellery in Scotland. Edinburgh, H.M.S.O.
Published to accompany an exhibition of portraits and jewellery at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in 1991. Forty of the portraits on display, with forty jewels or groups of jewels, are illustrated. Covers the period from the sixteenth to the twentieth century.
Monnas, L. 2008. Merchants, Princes and Painters: Silk Fabrics in Italian and Northern Painting 1300-1550. London, Yale University Press.
Examines the Italian silk fabrics depicted in paintings from Italy, England and the Netherlands over the course of 250 years.
Moore, A. and Crawley, C. 1992. Family and Friends: A Regional Survey of British Portraiture. Norwich, Norfolk Museums Service, H.M.S.O.
Includes 113 items relating to Norfolk: works of art on paper, sculpture, brasses, and other types of objects (e.g. plaster death-mask), dating from the fifteenth to the twentieth century. A full catalogue entry is given for each item.
Nevinson, J. L. 1967. Shakespeare's dress in his portraits, Shakespeare Quarterly, XVIII(2), 101-116.
Nicholson, R. 2005. From Ramsay's Flora MacDonald to Raeburn's MacNab: the use of tartan as a symbol of identity, Textile History, 36(2), 146-167.
Portraits and satirical engravings offer insights into the differing ways in which tartan was used, displayed and adopted as an expression of identity during the period 1746-1822. From being the cloth of Jacobitism, tartan became the cloth of the loyal Highlander, fighting for the Hanoverian crown; from being the cloth of an Enlightenment 'natural man', it became the garb of the vilified Lord Bute and rapacious Scots in general; from being an exotic 'foreign' costume at a London masquerade, it became the costume of nascent Scottish nationalism, a role which it retains to this day.
Norman, A. V. B. 1996-97. ‘George IV and Highland Dress’, Review of Scottish Culture, 10, 5-15.
Considers the evidence from archives, paintings and drawings of George IV wearing Highland Dress on occasions from 1789 and not just on his famous visit to Scotland in 1822.
Norris, M. W. 1988. Monumental Brasses. The Portfolio Plates of the Monumental Brass Society 1894-1984, Boydell Press.
The plates illustrate brasses from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century. A brief section on the use of brasses for the study of dress is included.
Orsi Landini, Roberta and Mary Westerman Bulgarella, eds. 2001. ‘Costume in Fifteenth-Century Florentine Portraits of Women’. In David Alan Brown, ed. Virtue & Beauty: Leonardo’s Ginevra de’Benci and Renaissance Portraits of Women. Washington: National Gallery of Art, pp. 89-96.
Catalogue of an exhibition held at the National Gallery of Art in Washington.Owen Hughes, D. 1986. ‘Representing the Family: Portraits and Purposes in Early Modern Italy’. In Journal of Interdisciplinary History, n.1, pp. 7-38.
Pointon, M. 1993. Dangerous excrescences: wigs, hair and masculinity. In: Hanging the Head: Portraiture and Social Formation in Eighteenth-Century England, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 107-139.
Portoghesi, Lucia. 1984. Il costume e l’immagine pittorica nel Seicento umbro. Florence: Centro Di.
Postle, M. 1998. Angels and Urchins: The Fancy Picture in 18th-Century British Art. . Nottingham, Djanogly Art Gallery in association with Lund Humphries.
Catalogue of an exhibition at the Djanogly Art Gallery (University of Nottingham) and Kenwood House (Hampstead), May-August 1998. Includes colour illustrations.
Ribeiro, A. 1984. The Dress worn at Masquerades in England, 1730 to 1790, and its Relation to Fancy Dress in Portraiture. New York & London, Garland.
Ribeiro, A. 1998. Reading dress in Hogarth's "Marriage a la mode", Apollo, 147, 49-50.
The writer discusses the meaning of dress in 18th-century British artist William Hogarth's series Marriage a la mode. Throughout the series, Hogarth uses clothing, furnishings, and background paintings to illustrate morals. Through clothing, Hogarth imparts a language of meaning and conveys how people relate to each other and to society in general. Hogarth knows that while clothing may distort the body, it can, for women in particular, act as a protective armor against life's dangers.
Ribeiro, A. 2000. The Gallery of Fashion. London, National Portrait Gallery.
This study of the role of costume in portraiture is centred around 100 examples from the collections of the National Portrait Gallery. Through them the author explores the purpose and original context of the dress in which the sitter chose to be recorded - the damasks, satins, velvets and furs of Tudor and Stuart magnificence worn by Queen Elizabeth I and Charles I, but also the revolutionary simplicity of the cottons and linens adopted by Mary Wollstonecraft, John Constable and John Clare. The evolution of the three-piece suit is traced, as painted by Zoffany and Reynolds and photographed by Cecil Beaton and Norman Parkinson. Increasing social and sexual freedom is revealed in twentieth-century dress as worn by the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Germaine Greer, Princess Diana and Vivienne Westwood.
Specially commissioned photography provides illustrations of surviving examples of original costume and accessories, including some of the actual clothes worn by the sitters in their portraits, and is complemented by related material, including tailor's bills and fabric designs. Close-up details are used to clarify issues of manufacture, decoration and construction.
Ribeiro, A. 2005. Fashion and Fiction: Dress in Art and Literature in Stuart England. New Haven & London, Yale University Press.
The Stuart period is particularly rich in the variety of dress among the wealthier classes, ranging from the complex, sometimes 'metaphysical' clothing of the Jacobean elite and the romance of Arcadia at the court of Charles I to the influence of Puritan moral and religious discourses, the extravagance of Restoration fashion and new concepts of gentility and modernity in the early eighteenth century. Relatively few garments survive from before the eighteenth century, and the history of costume in the preceding centuries therefore has to rely to a great extent on literary and visual evidence. This book examines Stuart England through the mirror of dress. It argues that both artistic and literary sources can be read and decoded for information on dress and on the way it was perceived in a period of immense political, social and cultural change. Focusing on the rich visual culture of the age, including portraits, engravings, fashion plates and sculpture, and on the many and varied literary sources - poetry, drama, essays, sermons – the author creates an account of Stuart dress and reveals the ways in it reflects and influences society. Supported by a wide range of images, she outlines the main narrative of clothing, as well as exploring such themes as court costumes, the masque, fanciful and 'romantic' concepts, the ways in which political and religious ideologies could be expressed in dress, and the importance of London as a fashion centre.
Roberts, J. 1993. Holbein and the Court of Henry VIII. Drawings and Miniatures from the Royal Library, Windsor Castle. Edinburgh, National Galleries of Scotland.
Catalogue of an exhibition held at the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh.
Russell, S. 2006. Restoration Londoners: a rare view of the City and its inhabitants in 1660, Apollo, 164, 48-55.
The writer examines a previously unknown, enormous painting that depicts a crowd of Londoners watching the ceremonial arrival of the Prince de Ligne in 1660. She explains that the painting, which still hangs in the Chateau of Beloeil, the Belgian home of the De Ligne family, records the scene on Tower Wharf as the prince arrived to convey the congratulations of Philip IV of Spain to the newly reinstated Charles II. She asserts that this hitherto unrecognized major work provides a unique view of London in the years before the Great Fire, and may also prove to be the most important known source of information relating to English contemporary dress at the Restoration. Discussing the artist's identity, she suggests that it is the work of Brussels artist Francois Duchatel. She argues that, both as a social document and as a topographical record, the painting is clearly a unique, eyewitness account.
Shesgreen, S. ed. 1990. The Criers and Hawkers of London: Engravings and Drawings by Marcellus Laroon. Aldershot, Scolar.
The plates in this book come from two different editions of Marcellus Laroon’s The Cryes of the City of London Drawne after the Life. These detailed and carefully drawn studies, by a master draughtsman with an interest in dress, provide a rich source of evidence for dress in the later seventeenth century.
Shrimpton, J. 1995. ‘The National Portrait Gallery Heinz Archive and Library, Orange Street, London WC2’, Costume, 29, 93-100.
Describes resources in this archive that may be of interest to dress historians.
Simons, Patricia. 1994. ‘Alert and Erect: Masculinity in some Italian Renaissance Portraits of Fathers and Sons’. In Richard Trexler, ed. Gender Rhetorics: Postures of Dominance and Submission in History. Binhampton, New York: Medieval and Early Renaissance Texts and Studies, pp. 163-186.
Smart, A. 1992. Allan Ramsay, 1713-1784, Scottish National Portrait Gallery and National Portrait Gallery.
Catalogue of an exhibition of Allan Ramsay’s work shown in Edinburgh and London 1992-1993. Includes detailed entries and illustrations for each portrait (including 48 full-page colour plates). The portraits and detailed notes on sitters provide a wealth of material for the study of eighteenth-century fashion.
Stevenson, S. and Bennett, H. 1978. Van Dyck in Check Trousers: Fancy Dress in Art and Life, 1700-1900. Edinburgh, Scottish National Portrait Gallery: Trustees of the National Galleries of Scotland.
Strong, R. C. 1969. The Elizabethan Image: Painting in England 1540-1620. London, Tate Gallery.
Exhibition catalogue with monochrome and colour plates.
Strong, R. C. 1969. The English Icon. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Numerous monochrome and a few colour plates of Elizabethan and Jacobean portraits.
Strong, R. C. 1969. Tudor and Jacobean Portraits. London, H.M.S.O.
Two volumes. Catalogue with monochrome and colour plates of the collection at the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Strong, R. C. and Murrell, J. 1983. Artists of the Tudor Court: the Portrait Miniature Rediscovered 1520-1620. London, Victoria and Albert Museum.
Numerous monochrome and eight pages of colour plates of miniatures and some large portraits.
Tanner, L. E. and Nevinson, J. L. 1935. ‘On some later funeral effigies in Westminster Abbey’, Archaeologia, LXXXV, 171-175.
Includes discussion of an effigy of Charles II.
Tarrant, N. E. A. 1996. ‘The portrait, the artist and the costume historian’, Dress, 22, 69-77.
The author reflects on the use of portraits by the costume historian, with particular reference to Allan Ramsey’s work.
Tinagli, Paola. 1997. Women in Italian Renaissance Art: Gender, Representation, Identity. Manchester University Press.
Tiramani, J. 2005. The Sanders portrait, Costume, 39, 43-52.
Adapted from a paper presented at the "Picturing Shakespeare" symposium, University of Toronto, Canada, November 2002. An attempt to determine whether, based on an analysis of its clothing, the Sanders Portrait is in fact a portrait of William Shakespeare. According to the family tradition of the owner of the portrait, dated to 1603, it was painted by John Sanders. An examination of the portrait in 1909 revealed the word "Shakspere" on a small linen rag paper label on the back (since lost). The most significant aspect of the clothing appears to be the extremely closely spaced silver laces of the doublet. Under the "A proclamation against excesse in Apparell, 6 July 1597," none shall wear gold or silver lace under the degree of a baron's son, except gentlemen in ordinary Office, attending upon Her Majesty in her house or chamber. However, as Shakespeare was made a King's player by James I on May 19, 1603, he may have had the right to wear such clothing.
Tittler, R. 2006. Freemen's gloves and civic authority: the evidence from post-Reformation portraiture, Costume, 40, 13-20.
The writer examines the symbolic use of gloves in the portraits of English civic officials from the post-Reformation period between ca. 1560, when civic portraits first started to appear with any frequency, and ca. 1640. Townspeople and others would have understood gloves worn, displayed, or portrayed in the civic context as reflective of the personal status of a freeman as well as of the civic authority of the freemanry as the civic and often corporate governing body of the borough community. In addition, they would have understood the symbolic distinction between the gloves of a mayor and those worn by members of the landed elite. Therefore, the display of gloves in civic portraits, along with the civic type of portrait itself, offers an important, widespread, and widely understood claim to the civic identity of specific towns and to the growing authority of civic bodies in general at that time.
Wilton, A. 1992. The Swagger Portrait: Grand Manner Portraiture in Great Britain from Van Dyck to Augustus John, 1630-1930. London, Tate Gallery.
All of the 79 portraits included in the exhibition are reproduced in full colour.
