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View at the museum ↗The New Fashioned Phaeton
Philip Dawe1776
- Attribution
- Attributed to Philip Dawe English, 1750-1785
- Medium
- Mezzotint with touches of engraving in black on off-white laid paper
- Physical dimensions
- Plate: 35.2 × 25.2 cm (13 7/8 × 9 15/16 in.); Sheet: 47 × 29.9 cm (18 9/16 × 11 13/16 in.)
- Credit line
- Robert Chase Endowment
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Source rights statement: Public domain
View the museum record ↗From the museum
Devoting less effort to the fabric textures and pearly luster of high-society mezzotint portraits, publishers also mocked sartorial excesses, especially those with foreign sources. In 1770s London, the epithet macaroni was directed at dandyish men and overdressed women who adopted an outrageous, European style and acted in an affected manners that their genders were said to become indistinguishable. Such costumes evidently even made leaving home difficult. This print’s subtitle, “Sic Itur ad Astra” (which translates as “Thus one goes to the stars”) comes from the Roman poet Virgil and suggests that the wigs and expanding carriages shown here have reached astronomical new heights.
Description: Art Institute of Chicago · CC BY 4.0