![]() Instead, he riffs on Rubens to revel in pear-shaped hips, muscular arms and serpentine necks. He has no interest in harmonious classical bodies like the plaster casts of Greek statues his Royal Academy students had to draw. Where Fuseli departs from the bawdy heteronormative pornography of Rowlandson is by dwelling just as sensually on the accessories as on the boobs: the standing woman’s tight black silk sleeve gives off a sheen you would think impossible in watercolour. They have fashionable feathers in their hair. ![]() In a darkened boudoir a woman sits with her eyes closed and breasts bared while her friend puts the finishing touches to her insanely complex hair and makeup. Are they models or fantasies? Two Courtesans at a Dressing Table, a watercolour from 1805-6, transports you into the candlelit world of the gothic imagination. This was an age when James Boswell casually mentions in his diary that while crossing London Bridge he stopped for a quick, unplanned negotiation with a sex worker.įuseli depicts many professional providers of male pleasure in this show. George Romney not only portrayed Nelson’s lover Emma Hamilton many times but filled sheets with repeated drawings just of her lips, following in the fetishist footsteps of Thomas Gainsborough who makes love to his female sitters with delicate strokes of paint that dwell deliriously on lace and silk. ![]() Photograph: Private collectionĪs for his passion for women, explored in these drawings of fantastical hair and bulbous buttocks, this too was typical of artists in late 18th- and early 19th-century Britain. Two Courtesans at a Dressing Table (1805-06) by Henry Fuseli at the Courtauld, London.
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