The English Ladies Dandy Toy
Description:
Dorothy George describes this print as follows:
A good-looking young woman, looking down and to the r., holds by two strings a jointed puppet (a pantin, a toy for ladies in vogue in the mid-eighteenth century . . . ) in the form of a dandy: in one hand is an umbrella . . . in the other a bell-shaped top-hat; it wears top-boots and breeches. She sits by an open sash-window, through which flowers are seen, wearing a becoming evening-dress, with long gloves and feathers in her hair. On a table is a book: "Quite the Dandy set to Music.” (846)
Copyright:
Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. Copyright, 2009.
Accession Number:
818.12.9.1
Marks Description
In addition to the caption, The English Ladies Dandy Toy, the bottom of the print reads, on the left, "I. R. Cruikshank del. et fecit." and, on the right, "Pubd Decr 9th 1818 by T Tegg 111 Cheapside."Printing Context
The English Ladies Dandy Toy originally appeared as an inexpensive print, perhaps as part of a series on dandies. It was also bound in Caricature Magazine, vol. 5 (n.d.).Associated Texts
As Dorothy George notes, “[t]he dandy, of all ranks, is the chief subject of satire in 1818” (822). Robert Cruikshank contributed many prints to this trend; most relevant to this print are A Dandy Cock in Stays—Or A New Thing for the Ladies; The Hen-Pecked Dandy; Comparative Anatomy of the Dandy Tribe; The Dandy Lion an Exotic, and The Dandy Dressing at Home (all 1818).Subject
In this 1818 print caricature by Isaac Robert Cruikshank, a woman holds a puppet styled as a dandy. Cruikshank’s print betrays the same preoccupations with mimetic doubling, mechanic manipulation, and gender anxiety that contemporary discourse on automata produced in abundance.Theme
The dandy aesthetic, modeled and popularized by Beau Brummell in London beginning around 1800, became one of the reigning masculine aesthetics of the period as well as a key target of satire for nineteenth-century England and France. Adopted most famously by Lord Byron, George IV, Charles Baudelaire, and Oscar Wilde, as well as by countless British and French aesthetes, the style also became shorthand for the Romantic poet, even after Romanticism’s historical moment. For Brummell, the dandy style was defined by a meticulous attention to appearance, frequent bathing, close-cut jackets and riding trousers, as well as an urbane, witty, openly sexual, cultured, poetic, and ironic personality (Kelly; Godfrey). In its most extreme manifestations, satirized in this and other dandy prints, “calf implants in stockings were not uncommon, corseting for men was encouraged, as well as cravats so tight and so stiffly starched that men could not see their feet” (Kelly, caption to fig. 62).Significance
The dandy was and still is associated with Romantic poetry, Regency style, the cult of celebrity, and the figure of the public aesthete. On the opposite end of the spectrum from the figure of John Bull, the dandy also countered and even threatened British masculinity with elitism, sensuality, and sexuality. Satiric prints made much of the dandy’s effeminate appearance and manner, in some cases depicting them corseted and even full-breasted (Kelley).Bibliography
Bryant, Mark and Simon Heneage. “Cruikshank, Isaac Robert (1789-1856).” Dictionary of British Cartoonists and Caricaturists: 1730-1980. Aldershot: Scolar P, 1994. Print.Long Title
The English Ladies Dandy ToyFeatured in Exhibit:
From the Collection:
Engraver:
Delineator:
Image Date:
9 December 1818
Publisher:
T. Tegg
