Détournements Mineurs

Portrait of Countess Natalya Vladimirovna Saltykov (1780) by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein. Hermitage Museum.

• Mourning ring.

Date: 1777 

Place of origin: England

Medium: Gold, amethyst, pearl, crystal, ivory, gouache, enamel.

Frances Willock (1759-1806) attributed to Ozias Humphry (1742-1810)

▪︎Small case with hinged top, sablé, containing ring, "Je cache mes amours.".

Culture: French

Date:  Late 18th century

Medium: Beadwork, Sablé.

• Wedding Dress.

Date: 1916

Designer/Maker: Lucile (Chicago)

Medium: Silk satin, lace, silk flowers.

Jane Fleming, later Countess of Harrington

Description

Contemporary audiences would have recognized Jane's outstretched hand and arm as a conventional theater gesture that actors assumed when about to speak. Reynolds also refers to contemporary fashion, depicting Jane's hair ornamented by the ostrich feathers that the Duchess of Devonshire had recently made popular.

• Dress.

Date: 1740-1760, 1780

Lady Amelia Anne Hobart, later Marchioness of Londonderry (1794) by Thomas Lawrence. Blicking Hall, Norfolk.

Konstantin Somov, Fireworks in the Park, 1907

Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun’s “Self Portrait in Studio Costume,” from about 1800

Credit…via Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, photo by Bruce M. White

Ring

18th century

possibly French

Gold, ivory

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Lady Bampfylde

About this portrait

Catherine Moore (c. 1754-1832) was the eldest of four daughters of Admiral Sir John Moore (1718-79). She married Charles Warwick Bampfylde (1753-1823), eldest son of Sir Richard Warwick Bampfylde (1722-76), Member of Parliament for Exeter and Devon, on 9 February 1776. Several months later, in August 1776, her husband succeeded his father as 5th Baronet. The present portrait was presumably commissioned to celebrate the couple's marriage. Lady Bampfylde is dressed in flowing white draperies. In her bosom she wears a pansy, her right hand gesturing towards a white lily, the time-honoured emblem of purity. The lily is framed against the stone pedestal upon which she rests her left arm, while below on the ground are daisies, gentians and what appear to be tiny pink pompon dahlia. Lady Bampfylde's pose, her right arm extended across her torso towards the lily, her left arm artfully placed upon the stone plinth, is a witty adaptation of the famous classical statue, the Venus de' Medici, here reversed. In the classical statue the goddess's hands are positioned over her breasts and genitalia, simultaneously emphasising her modesty and her sexual potency. Here Reynolds has slightly lowered the left arm, while the gesturing right arm casts an artful shadow across the area of the figure's lower torso.