18th century blog

Mrs. Alexander Hamilton, 1787.

I discovered American portrait painter Ralph Earl through the great blog 18th century American women which I’ve featured here earlier. I love his slightly naive paintings with great attention to costume and detail, and depicting one of my favourite fashion periods, the late 1780s and early 1790s.

Ralph Earl on Wikipedia.

A short Ralph Earl article at Bolton Community News.

An extensive biography of Ralph Earl at Worcester Art Museum.

Ralph Earl: The Face of the Young Republic on Amazon.

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John Guilford Russell, 1790

Check out the Louvre databases! Not exactly tons of 18th century stuff and not very big pictures, but still a lot of great stuff.

Portrait of a lady said to be Lady Bessborough.

John Downman was an English portrait painter and he’s one of my favourite 18th century artists. He made lots of beautiful little portrait drawings.

As always, let me know if you know where to find more or bigger pictures or perhaps know of a book featuring his work.

John Downman on Wikipedia.

John Downman on Answers.com.

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Empress Maria Feodorovna by Voille, 1792.

I’ve been fascinated by Russian dresses of the late 18th century for a while. They have a pretty unusual style and are very beautiful. A lot of them seem pretty similar to the robe à la turque to me, with the “t-shirt” arms, but some seem to have a kind of vest, and the court dress I saw at the Fastes de cour exhibition had yet another vest-like style that I realised looks a bit different to all of these portraits when I looked at the pictures together.

Does anyone know if there are any books on 18th century Russian dress? Though preferably not in Russian :)

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Portrait of a lady, said to be Marie-Madeleine Guimard, called Mademoiselle Guimard, ballerina of the Paris Opéra.

I can’t find any information about the artist Jean-Frederic Schall on the internet, but he did a lot of paintings of dancers, as well as romantic and erotic paintings. Most of the paintings I’ve seen seem to be made in the 1780s. He did some lovely paintings and if you have any tips on where to find more paintings and information do let me know.

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Mrs. Alexander Hamilton by Ralph Earl, 1787.

Here’s a great blog I just came across, History of American Women – 18th Century. Lots of portraits of and information about women in 18th century America.

Portrait of Mrs James Denham by Sir Thomas Lawrence, 1789.

Here’s a great resource for 18th century portraits. Historical Portraits is a database of British historical portraiture and there are some wonderful 18th century examples among them. There’s not a huge amount but the photos are generally great and there was a surprisingly large amount of portraits I hadn’t even seen before!

Antoine Pesne with his daughters, 1754.

Antoine Pesne was a French rococo portrait artist who lived between 1683 and 1757.

Antoine Pesne on Wikipedia, and on Swedish Wikipedia.

Antoine Pesne on Encyclopedia Britannica.

Antoine Pesne on Art Directory.

See more of Pesne’s paintings after the cut.

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Jean-Laurent Mosnier, Portrait of a lady, 1791.

Here’s another online art database you can search by time period, the Web Gallery of Art. The easiest way to find the 18th century art is to go to the list of artists and choose period or time-line.

On the website of the Finnish national gallery you can search artworks by time period (just click “artworks”), and there are lots of 18th century ones.

Self portrait.

Pehr Hilleström was a Swedish 18th century painter who often painted everyday scenes with great attention to detail.

Pehr Hilleström on Historiesajten. In Swedish.

Pehr Hilleström at Konstnärslexikonet Amanda. Also in Swedish.

Some Hilleström paintings after the cut.

Edit: Updated this post with two more paintings.

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Sofia Vladimirovna Panina, 1791.

I don’t know anything about Jean-Louis Voille except that he appears to be French and seems to have painted mainly Russians. His paintings are lovely though, and you can see more after the cut.

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Here’s another great database to check out. Joconde is a catalogue of French museum collections. Go to the advanced search and write 18e siècle in the “Période/Datation” box and you’ll get all the 18th century stuff. I found lots of great paintings, objects and clothes.

Une Collection Francaise is a blog containing “a collection of French miniature portraits owned by a French collector who wishes to share them with art lovers”, and most of them are 18th century. Click the picture of Lamballe to go there.