Following the previous post What a Spectacle! which looked at the development of spectacles during the Georgian Era, I had a question/observation from a reader regarding portraits of women wearing spectacles – or rather the lack of them.
With that in mind, I have tried, almost in vain to put together a short post to show just women wearing spectacles. To be honest it has proved to be something of a challenge and of course, I thrive on challenges!
There are only a few possible explanations for the lack of images, the first being that of vanity; you wanted to look at your best when having your portrait painted and ‘masking‘ the eyes with spectacles or even showing publicly that your eyesight wasn’t quite what it should have been may have been one.
The second explanation is probably that young to middle-aged women simply preferred to use an eyeglass of some sort if they felt their eyesight was lacking or finally, that quite simply eye tests as we understand them today, simply did not exist in the same way, therefore people didn’t realize how good or bad their eyesight really was.
Around the 1800s the use of any type of spectacles was a sign of old age and infirmity, so it seems that vanity would most likely have prevented many women from admitting to this!
For ‘ladies of fashion’ the lorgnette was immensely popular. The picture below shows one invented by George Adams Jr. (1750 – 1795) in the form of a penknife and intended to be carried loose in the pocket. Lorgnettes were developed towards the end of the 1700’s and often took the form of a pair of eyeglasses on a long handle.
If you preferred something slightly more discrete and more akin to a piece of jewellery then the other option were quizzling glasses which became popular from the early 1800’s.
Moving on to the portraits that I have found, and to be honest they seem to confirm the suggestion, and only feature the more mature woman.
The first offering is an oil painting entitled ‘The Sense of Hearing, The Sense of Sound’ by the French artist Philippe Mercier.
The next is a self-portrait by the Polish artist Anna Dorothea Therbusch, painted circa 1777, when she was around 65 years of age.
The third offering is Friederike Charlotte of Stolberg-Gedern in her later life.
The next, a caricature entitled ‘ The Mutual Embrace’ courtesy of the British Museum.
Finally, there is ‘High Life Below Stairs’ by John Collet, London, England, 1763.
Unfortunately, despite best attempts, I failed to find any paintings of young women wearing spectacles, so as many of you know my blog posts couldn’t possibly be complete without any caricatures so I offer this one from the Lewis Walpole Library entitled ‘Heyday! Is this my daughter Anne!‘, yet again depicting an elderly woman accompanied by her daughter who is sporting one of our favourite enormous hairstyles.
All Things Georgian 