Figure 1.--.
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Figure 1.--. |
We note that short hair seems very popular for girls in the early 18h century. We are still accessing the hair styles of girls in painted portraits and have not yet reached conclusions over hair style trends.
Sir William Beechey was the foremost portraitist in Britain in the late 18th and early 19th century. He started his career painting portraits of the landed gentry around Norfolk. He was appointed as the court painter to Quenn Charlotte. He painited the cream of Regency society, including Lord Nelson. His charming portaits of families provide wonderful glimses into Regency society, including children's clothes. We note portaits in the 1780s of boys wearing long, but uncurled hair. This was identical with French hair styles at the time. A portrait from the 1800s shows boys wearing shorter hair.
Sir Thomas Lawrence is one of the greatest English portratists. This child prodigy and largely self-taught artist became the fashionable portrait painter of his day. On the death of Sir. Joshua Reynolds in 1792, he was made principal painter to King George III, who knighted him in 1815. Lawrence is especially noted for his children's portraits for which he was unsurpassed in his day. His portraits of artistocratic or wealthy children provide a rich source of information on fashionable children's wear of the day. The Lawrence portraits that we have noted show both boys and girls with realtively short hair styles, sometimes covering their ears. We do not note ringlet curls.
A rare portrait by John Constable, noted English landscape artist, shows the Lambert children (boys and girls) with short hair.
Many fascinating American primitives exist providing a wealth
of information about children's fashions. While the artist is not
known, in some cases the children depicted and the
approximate date of the paintings are known. These portraits
are some of the few sources of information as to what
American boys were actually wearing in the early 19th
century before the advent of photography. Thes artists are
particularly important as unlike the work of the more
accomplished artists, these primative/naive artists painted the
children of more ordinary less wealthy families--giving a
helpful glimse of popular fashion. Many of the girls in these early portraits have very short hair.
Helen Allingham, a noted English water colorist, had her son Henry wear curls as a younger boy, but to my knowledge they were not done in curls.
Anna Lea Merrit was a Victorian romantic painter, influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites. She did some charming portraits of children and families as well as for the times some very daring works. Merrit in 1885 painted the eldest children of Thomas, 2nd Baron Robartes. The Robartes were a very wealthy family from Lanhydrock in Cornwall. The date 1885 is notable as it was the same year Little Lord Fauntleroy was published. The portrait is notable because it shows the variations among families. The older boy looks to be about 7 or eight. He wears a black velvet Funtleroy suit, but with short hair rather than ringlet curls. The youngest child in the white dress is not identified, but looks to be a boy who
has not yet been breeched. He also has relatively short hair.
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