Description: Hand-colored etching titled "NOTHING EXTENUATE nor ought set down in Malice- / Pub 28 Aug 1827 by H Fores Pansor[?illeg] St. Haymarket." depicting a woman wearing an immense wide-brimmed hat festooned with ribbons and a dress with puffed leeves and a wide skirt in the height of (exaggerated) fashion. The artist was Henry Heath (w.1822-1842), the brother of William Heath (1795-1840) and an etcher of political cariactures and lithographer; the plate was published by H Fores on Panton Street, Haymarket, in London on August 28, 1827; the quote is taken from Shakespeare's Othello. The print is a satire on the growing size of women's hats, sleeves and hem circumferences in the late 1820s (sizes that would only increase more by the mid-1830s), while keeping small waists as a hallmark of the fashionable ideal.
Tags: fashion Subjects: Etching; Watercolor painting Link to share this object record: https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2002.41.1 |