The difference between men’s and women’s clothing during this decade that was especially pronounced in England is evident in Joseph Wright of Derby’s 1765 portrait of Peter Perez Burdett and his first wife Hannah Burdett (Fig. 2) and pannier for women–that gently or otherwise encouraged ideal posture worked together with proper bearing, inculcated from childhood with lessons from the dancing master, to communicate social standing and a life of leisure. In the eighteenth century, clothes themselves–especially the corset (Fig. “Gainsborough’s portrait of Lady Howe is apt testimony to the art of graceful deportment it is almost as though she has been captured on canvas, poised to take the next step in a formal dance.” As dress historian Aileen Ribeiro observes (Ribeiro/ Earl and Countess Howe 33): Although Gainsborough placed Countess Howe in a landscape setting as though he had come upon her out for a walk in the countryside around Bath, the portrait was painted in his studio in that spa town, where the countess’s husband was taking the waters for his gout. Her “arsenal of accessories” includes a wide-brimmed straw hat decorated with white satin ribbons, a multi-strand pearl choker and large circular pearl earrings, lace sleeve ruffles, or engageantes, a sheer fichu and apron (either fine embroidered mull or gauze), black silk “bracelets,” and high-heeled black leather buckled shoes (Ribeiro/ Earl and Countess Howe 32). The lightweight silk, known as “lutestring” during the period, was favored for informal summer wear (Ribeiro/ Earl and Countess Howe 32). The gently rounded skirts suggest that she has adopted a newly fashionable small hoop or side hoops. The countess wears a pale pink silk taffeta “nightgown” (a style of dress with a fitted back that was popular in England from the early eighteenth century) with oval sleeve cuffs decorated with bows and a matching petticoat with a single flounce. 1), conveys the understated elegance favored by aristocratic English women for daywear. Thomas Gainsborough’s full-length 1764 portrait of Mary, Countess Howe (Fig.
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