Brilliant Women: 18th-century Bluestockings is a major exhibition opening Thursday 13 March at the National Portrait Gallery co-curated by Dr Elizabeth Eger, Lecturer in Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Literature at King’s.
This is the first exhibition to explore the culture, impact and identity of the Bluestockings, and their followers, who forged new links between gender, learning and virtue in 18th-century Britain.
‘The exhibition aims to show how this remarkable group of creative and intellectual women in 18th century Britain were celebrated as icons of patriotic pride and came to symbolise the progress of a civilised and commercial nation, ’ explains Dr Eger.
Publicly celebrated in their time, these women, who met together in salons and were known as ‘bluestockings’, invented a new kind of informal sociability and nurtured a sense of intellectual community among the writers, artists and thinkers who attended their ‘conversation parties’.
Creative and intellectual women
Initially associated with a specific social group, the term ‘bluestocking’ came to apply to creative and intellectual women more generally. Active in art, literature and even political thought, the bluestockings were not just brilliant - they were exceptional, both for their individual accomplishments and for collectively pushing the boundaries of what women could undertake or achieve.
The exhibition begins by exploring the intimate world of the original Bluestocking Circle. It moves on to consider the way a wider range of bluestockings, such as the artist Angelica Kauffmann, historian Catharine Macaulay and early ‘feminist’ Mary Wollstonecraft, used portraiture to advance their work and their reputations in a period framed by the new possibilities introduced by the Enlightenment and the restrictions imposed in the age of revolution.
Dr Eger says: ‘The exhibition considers the way in which women used portraiture to advance their work and reputations in a period framed by Enlightenment and Revolution. By considering fine art alongside various commemorative items and other popular culture, 'Brilliant Women' explores how the educated woman was, for the first time, celebrated as a figure of national pride – but also satirized and feared, particularly by the end of the century.’
There are 50 works on display including oil portraits, drawings, satires and personal artefacts. There are rediscovered portraits and well loved masterpieces by Romney, Kauffmann, Ramsay, Vigée-LeBrun and Robert Adam.
Sandy Nairne, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, London, says: ‘These were remarkable, brilliant women and the “bluestockings” are an excellent subject for the National Portrait Gallery to explore.’
Brilliant Women: 18th Century Bluestockings is co-curated by Dr Elizabeth Eger, and Dr Lucy Peltz, 18th Century Curator at the National Portrait Gallery. It runs from 13 March to 15 June in the Porter Gallery, admission is free. It is sponsored by BlackBerry® and was made possible through the support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
A fully-illustrated book by the curators, Dr Elizabeth Eger and Dr Lucy Peltz, accompanies the exhibition and additionally establishes the legacy of the bluestockings for successive generations of creative and literary women.
Source: By King's College London
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