In 1773, John Raphael Smith produced a work of art called Miss Macaroni and Her Gallant at a Print-Shop<\/em><\/a>. This scene depicts a scenario ever more common on the Georgian high street: passers-by congregating around a shop front to gawp at portraits of fellow citizens depicted on a series of prints.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Georgian Britain was awash with printed images. Prints populated coffee houses, people\u2019s homes and, as we can see in Raphael Smith\u2019s work, even hung from dedicated shop windows. This was an age characterised by a \u201cprint revolution\u201d, a technological and cultural transformation that saw more imagery available to view and to purchase than ever before.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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This artistic revolution coincided with another transformation in 18th-century Britain: a sea change in the way that people depicted themselves. Gone was the era of deferential, idealised portraits of society\u2019s leading lights, to be replaced by bawdy, colourful \u2013 and often deeply unflattering \u2013 works of satire. Georgian prints invariably poked fun at their subjects \u2013 and it\u2019s for that very reason that the public loved them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Although often amusing to our eyes today, the Georgian satire revolution tells us more than simply what made people laugh. It also reveals some of the biggest anxieties of the period \u2013 and one of those anxieties centred around the issue of fatness.<\/p>\n
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The language of graphic satire in Georgian Britain was one of exaggeration, which meant that the body parts of the individuals portrayed were routinely overemphasised. In these works, artists eagerly enlarged noses, lengthened chins and inflated stomachs, breasts and buttocks, sometimes to extreme ends.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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But the preponderance of corpulent bodies in Georgian art was more than a mere satirical device: fatness was an issue that intersected with many of the age\u2019s social mores. In fact, the 18th century was a time in which corpulence took on an unprecedented cultural currency, one in which artists lampooned the nobility in satirical prints, and famously large people were commodified in portraits, prints and decorative consumable goods. At the same time, corpulent bodies were put on public display as spectacular objects, while the clothing that evidenced their former owners\u2019 size (not to mention the furniture that had been made or altered to accommodate fat bodies) became desirable items and objects of renown.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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All this happened due to the convergence of a number of social, intellectual, economic and cultural phenomena. Alongside the rise of print culture, the 18th century witnessed an increased availability of food, and the so-called \u201cconsumer revolution\u201d where those on the higher rungs of the social ladder had unprecedented access to luxury consumables.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Attitudes shifted decisively to establish thinness as the preferred body type for women <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div> <\/div>\n
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This was also the period in which the \u201cmodern self\u201d can be said to have emerged, a time that saw active attempts to outline \u2013 and define ideal forms of \u2013 categories of identity such as race, class and gender. Accompanying these developments were changes in beauty standards and attitudes towards the body, which shifted decisively in the second half of the century to establish thinness as the preferred body type for women. When artists and commentators attempted to portray or debate femininity or race \u2013 even what it meant to be human \u2013 the issue of corpulence was never far away.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Nor was the issue of gender. The 18th century has often been understood as an age that challenges the simplistic model of gendered \u201cseparate spheres\u201d, in which men occupied the worlds of politics, work and other forms of public culture, while women were relegated to the home. We only have to think about women like the political activist, socialite and style icon Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire to show that some Georgian women led vibrant public lives.<\/p>\n
Read more: History\u2019s weirdest fad diets and weight-loss gimmicks<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul><\/div>\n
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However, this relative freedom did not come without critique. Concerns around women\u2019s transgressions beyond the bounds of acceptable feminine behaviour abounded, particularly in the satirical image. Here fatness emerged as a consistent visual language, with famously public-facing women such as the actress Sarah Siddons and the political hostess Albinia Hobart, Countess of Buckinghamshire<\/em>\u00a0routinely satirised through the exaggerated portrayal of their forms. Albinia\u2019s \u201ccrimes\u201d included lasciviousness, overindulgence and a presence in the worlds of gambling and the theatre \u2013 and for that, the satirists savaged her.<\/p>\n
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James Gillray<\/a>\u2019s print Dido in Despair!<\/em><\/a>\u00a0typifies this trend. Published in 1801, it shows a rotund Emma Hamilton<\/a>, arms and leg raised in a desperate gesture of anguish caused by the departure of her lover, Lord Nelson. Emma, who rose through the ranks of 18th-century society to become the wife of Sir William Hamilton, first won fame for her performances portraying well-known sculptures and works of art, known as \u201cattitudes\u201d, enacted at her husband\u2019s home in Naples. Rendering her body the object of public display, these tableaux vivants<\/em> made Emma the subject of vicious critique, which presented the \u201dattitudes\u201d as overtly sexual in nature.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Traces of the erotic potential of Hamilton\u2019s performances can be seen throughout Dido in Despair!<\/em> Alluding to Sir William Hamilton\u2019s famous collection of classical antiquities, the meaning of a cluster of objects at Emma\u2019s feet is made clear by the grouping of statuettes in which a satyr gazes lustily at an armless Venus. At the same time, an open book on the window seat depicts Emma reclining nude. Its title, Studies of Academic Attitudes Taken from the Life<\/em>, makes its frame of reference obvious through direct reference to Emma\u2019s performances. Read against the fulsome fleshiness of her body, these classical allusions encourage the viewer to read the print as a critique of Emma\u2019s extra-marital trysts, as alluded to by the presence of her slumbering, blissfully unaware husband in the background of the print.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Hamilton\u2019s apparent lack of morals are also indicated by the trinkets that sit atop her dressing table. Including rouge, hairpins and a beaded necklace, these consumable goods point to another of the reasons that fatness became so culturally prevalent in the 18th century, the \u201cluxury debates\u201d. A shifting economic climate that resulted in an unprecedented availability of luxury goods sparked intense discussion over the nature of needs versus desires, one that was central to the moralising approaches to fatness that surfaced at this time.<\/p>\n
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