Ladies Dress, as it soon will be.

£2,800 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

A later impression of this print was included in the “Suppressed Plates” of the 1850 Bohn Edition of Gillray’s Works. The present impression is on paper watermarked “E P” - the same watermark that appears in other Gillray prints from this period (see “Fighting for the dunghill, or, Jack Tar settling Buonaparte” (H. Humphrey, 1798) in the Lewis Walpole Library). A scandalous print attributed to James Gillray satirising the fashion for women wearing Grecian-style, form-revealing muslim dresses. The print is thought to be aimed at Lady Charlotte Campbell, Lady-in-waiting to Queen Caroline, who said, “[o]ne’s choice of attire is as much a subject of public debate as one’s character; for a woman to seek any distinction invites the judgment of those who would rather see her retire into shadows”. Satires on women’s fashion in this period are not rare, but here Gillray, with his typical style, imagines further excess by showing an upperclass woman barely dressed with her breasts, legs and buttocks exposed in a loose fitting white muslim dress. She holds a fan - an almost ridiculous accessory intended to demurely conceal her, and in her hair are large feathers. The woman wears an English development of the Chemise à la Reine popularised by Marie Antoinette in 1783 when a painting by Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun was displayed in the Salon de Paris picturing Antoinette in a fine white muslin gown. The Chemise à la Raine emphasised the natural shapes of a woman’s body that were previou

• Year: 1796

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