Londoners Magazine

Today, the word “bluestocking” is a quaint, derogatory term for a bookish woman, conjuring up images of schoolmarmish clothes and spectacles.

Less well-known are the original Bluestockings, a group of predominantly female writers, artists and thinkers in 18th century London whose impact on the future of female art, literature and identity was profound.

The exhibition:

Now the Bluestocking circle is about to become the subject of a new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, titled Brilliant Women: 18th Century Bluestockings.

Using famous paintings, rarely-seen portraits, graphic satires and personal artefacts, it will explore the lives and work of women such as early “feminist” Mary Wollstonecraft, artist Angelica Kauffmann, historian Catharine Macaulay and novelist Fanny Burney.

Sandy Nairne, the gallery’s director said: “These were remarkable, brilliant women and the Bluestockings are an excellent subject for us to explore.”

Reshaping female mythology:

Elizabeth Eger, English lecturer at Kings College London and co-curator of the exhibition, approached the gallery seven years ago having been inspired by Richard Samuel’s 1778 painting “Portraits in the Characters of the Muses in the Temple of Apollo (The Nine Living Muses of Great Britain),” the subject of her PhD.

The painting depicts artistic women of the time - Angelica Kauffmann, the singer Elizabeth Sheridan (née Linley) and writers Elizabeth Carter and Anna Barbauld - as the nine muses, the daughters of Zeus who each presided over a different art.

“It intrigued me that these women had made their own female community,” Eger said. “And I was also interested in the way they deployed visual modes such as portraiture to celebrate their intellect.”

She describes how the women “strategically” reshaped female mythology in order to assert their own identity. “There is a self-portrait by Angelica Kauffmann, which is a homage to the Judgment of Hercules, where the hero chooses between vice and virtue. Kauffmann casts herself in the role of Hercules, but depicts the choice as between music and painting.”

History:

The Bluestocking women began meeting at the home of fashionable society hostess Elizabeth Montagu, in the 1750s.

Supported by intellectual male friends such as David Garrick, Samuel Johnson and Sir Joshua Reynolds, they rejected traditional feminine conversation and instead arranged literary breakfasts where they discussed academic pursuits.

They earned their moniker from the unusually informal blue woollen stockings that Montagu’s friend, botanist Benjamin Stillingfleet, wore to one of the meetings.

One portrait in the exhibition, by Hogarth, depicts David Garrick and his wife Eva Maria. Garrick sits at his desk, holding a quill pen, and his wife is shown behind him, poised to swipe the pen from his hand.

The image is powerfully indicative of the Bluestocking spirit. The idea, put forward by Mary Wollstonecraft in A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), that men are not intellectually superior to women.

The women formed an important part of the changing landscape of the 18th century; a period framed by new possibilities of the Enlightenment, which had come before, and the restraints of the age of revolution looming ahead.

Icons:

They were celebrated as icons of patriotic pride and came to symbolise the progress of a civilised and commercial nation. Collectively, they pushed the boundaries of what women could achieve, providing a legacy for their literary and artistic granddaughters.

But by the end of the century, as the political and social situation grew more repressive, the radical beliefs and unconventional sex lives of some of the group made them unpopular in society.

With the advent of Victorian conservatism and re-enforced gender demarcation, the names of many of the Bluestocking women faded into obscurity, along with their achievements.

Now at last, their substantial contribution to the creation and definition of our national culture is being acknowledged.

13 Mar-15 Jun 2008
National Portrait Gallery
St Martin’s Place
WC2H
020 7306 0055