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Unsanctioned Wanderings

Curated by Lucy Kimiko Hawkinson Traverse
A gypsy encampment

Epitomized by Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer Watching a Sea of Fog (c. 1817-18), and the Wordsworthian peripatetic, the gentlemanly or artistic wanderer is integral to the Romantic imagination. Wandering lies at the heart of picturesque sightseeing, blank verse poetry, specimen collecting, and the Romantic cultivation of self. However, these forms of sanctioned wandering exist against a backdrop of less desirable movements that, nonetheless, inform, color and at times literally converge with the endorsed amblings of the inquisitive artist-gentlemen. Unsanctioned forms of wandering existed on a spectrum of criminality, which at times included peddlers, actors, shepherds, discharged soldiers, beggars, orphaned children, gypsies, sailors, highwaymen, and pirates, among others. These disparate groups, while often meticulously differentiated, were also increasingly amalgamated as vagrants through a series of common burdens and discriminatory practices, resulting from the enclosure of common lands and changing Poor Laws, licensing, and Vagrancy Acts in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This gallery seeks to explore some of the strategies of representation used to capture the vagrant body in print—and, furthermore, to tease out some of the tensions and slippages between the text as material object and the roaming body it seeks to arrest.

Date Published

Date Published
July 2009

Exhibit Items

A gypsy encampment

Unknown
In collaboration with Heinrich Moritz Gottlieb Grellmann

Within a rocky landscape is situated a large, cave-like dwelling constructed of leaves and branches. Six adult figures and two small children sit or squat around a smoky fire, while two additional figures approach the encampment with freshly caught fish.

Gypsy Encampment

A page of text with an decorated letter "B"

John Thomas Smith

This image features text which, like an illuminated manuscript, begins with a decorated letter. The "B" of the text is carried by a beggar, consequently giving a visual synecdoche of the written topic, "beggary."

Historiated Initial “B”

A black man in a sailor's uniform with a model ship attached to his cap

John Thomas Smith

This image features Joseph Johnson, a beggar and street singer, wearing a model of the HMS Nelson he built himself as a hat.

Joseph Johnson (Black Joe of N4 Chandos Street, Covent Garden)

Margaret Finch, the queen of the Gypsies, in a cave

Cook

In a small, dark, cave-like dwelling, a woman with a creased brow and elongated nose sits crouched with her knees to her chest. She wears a white bonnet and large cloak, and she smokes a slender clay pipe.

Margaret Finch (Queen of the Gypsies at Norwood)

A nomad woman and two children

Unknown
In collaboration with Heinrich Moritz Gottlieb Grellmann

A woman travels through a landscape with two children: an infant held to her back in a shawl, and a young child who stands beside her and holds the hem of her cloak.

Nomad and Two Children

A gypsy woman confronts a pirate

James Heath
In collaboration with Heinrich Moritz Gottlieb Grellmann

This image depicts the encounter between a pirate and a gypsy, emphasizing their common status as nomadic outcasts at once romanticized and rejected by society.

Pirate and Gypsy

Portrait of Lady Caroline Montagu

George Hayter

This portrait depicts Lady Catherine Montagu as a figure of social unconventionality, sporting a dress reminiscent of both the piratical and the gypsy lifestyle as romanticized by writers of the era.

Portrait of Lady Caroline Montagu in Byronic Costume

A portrait of highwayman James Whitney

Unknown

A man, imprisoned, sits in the corner of a cell next to a barred window through which two figures stare. The captive wears a large brimmed hat, long curled wig, and cravat, which date the sitter to the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century.

The Trwe Effigies of James Whitney, the Notorious Highwayman.

A portrait of a young boy with a secondary scene below depicting a teacher and his student

Unknown
In collaboration with G.H. Wilson

A young, nude boy is depicted against a dark background in a bust medallion. Two cornucopias entwine above his head, spilling forth fruit and foliage as a border around the frame. Below is a smaller scene in which a teacher and pupil sit at a round table for a lesson in literacy.

Victor, the Savage of Aveyron

A view of some houses along a path

Humphry Repton
In collaboration with John Adey Repton

Repton's lavishly illustrated texts served to record past accomplishments as wells as to advertise his skills as a landscape architect.

View from My Own Cottage, in Essex (after)

A view of some houses along a path

Humphry Repton
In collaboration with John Adey Repton

Repton's lavishly illustrated texts served to record past accomplishments as wells as to advertise his skills as a landscape architect.

View from My Own Cottage, in Essex (before)

Exhibit Tags

Exhibit Tags
walking
movement
culture

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