[MUSIC] Let us now consider the pendant portraits of Edward, Second Viscount Ligonier and Penelope, Viscountess Ligonier, both painted in 1771 and both here at The Huntington. These magnificent paintings are both outstanding examples of 18th century portraiture and also fine examples of the gendered culture of sensibility. What are the features of the cultural sensibility on display in these two paintings and how are they gendered? Gainsborough painted a number of portraits of the gentry and the landed aristocracy in which horses take a prominent position, and none more so In his portrait of Viscount Ligonier. Two months after Edward Ligonier's accession to the title of Viscount Ligonier, his father-in-law George Pitt, who later founded the famous library at Oxford, commissioned Gainsborough to paint the picture, together with a companion full-length portrait of his eldest daughter, Penelope, which hangs next to the portrait of her husband here at the Huntington, and located just behind me. Let's begin with the portrait of Viscount Ligonier. Gainsborough presents Lord Lingonier in quotidian mode, as an everyday man of sensibility. He is relaxed and leaning against his horse, who is placed more prominently in the composition, and is her master and who addresses the viewer in an engaging way. British portraitists grappled with the problem of introducing horses into human portraiture without physically dwarfing the man or woman who constitutes the portraits principal subject. Through a variety of ingenious solutions, painters have avoided direct comparisons of the human sitter and his or her equine companion, often relegating the horse to a marginalized position within the picture. Here by contrast, as the writer of the commentary on the Huntington's webpages explains, Gainsborough took pains to give the two figures equal prominence, and to ensure that direct comparisons between Lord Lingonier and his horse are all but inescapable. The placement of the Viscount's raised right arm, his dangling hat, and flaring coat all serve to cut off the receding hindquarters of the horse so that it appears to stand upright on two legs like the man beside it. When the painting appeared with its companion at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1771, a critic complained, the horse being represented, as near to the spectator as the gentleman, and being a large object and a light color, attracts the eyes as much as the gentleman does. The eye is equally divided between them and it is to be feared that such people, as fit to be witty, will say the horse is as good a man as his master. And this is indeed the effect of the picture, one that I suggest Gainsborough deliberately set out to achieve. In a moment we will consider the portrait of Penelope Pitt, in relation to the compositional framework of its companion. But let's look more closely at the horse, who some commentators say here is made to take on some of the characteristics of femininity. Some say ingratiating femininity. The soulful gaze, the horse's alertly cocked ears and romantically flowing forelock invest the creature with an uncanny appearance of sympathetic sensitivity. Is the mare represented as sensitive to her master? Or is she threatening to upstage him? This portrayal of the horse may threaten to displace Lord Ligonier as the primary subject of the picture. Or it may be an attempt by Gainsborough to emphasize the quality of the man of sensitivity as one who was kind and attentive to the horses upon whom he depended. Viscount Ligonier was the owner of a very large stable of horses. And he was known to spend long periods of time in the company of his animals, possibly to the exclusion of his wife. Ligonier is here represented in a very relaxed, if not slightly roguish pose, with his legs astride, while his mare stands neatly and perhaps even modestly by his side as his equine companion. Perhaps Gainsborough simply intended to accurately represent Lingonier with a loved mare and he has sought to give the horse her due. His interest was to represent people and their animals in a natural setting, embedded in the attitudes of the every day. Hence his portrait, which is not unsympathetic to Viscount Ligonier, may be a celebration of both the mare and her master, an informal and very lively portrait of a country gentleman with his horse. Let us now turn to the portrait of Penelope Viscountess Ligonier, executed in early 1771 and exhibited with its companion in the Royal Academy shortly thereafter, where it hung from the 24th of April to the 28th of May. In considering this portrait, we will move momentarily away from our discussion of the representation of masculinity and turn instead to how representations of women fared within this 18th century highly gendered convention. The culture of sensibility was itself a culture of women. As scholars of sensibility such as Barker-Benfield have argued, two sides of the culture of sensibility's orientation toward reform were the liberation of women from their internalized and brutally enforced limitation, on one hand, and the reformation of men on the other. Both stemmed, in part, from the reformist impulses of women who sought to change mild manners away from the vice, drunkenness, profanity, wantonness in the dueling culture of the masculine sphere, to a way of life that celebrated virtue, abstemiousness, piousness, charity, homeliness and an appreciation of the arts. Values which might be considered to be feminine. Its fundamental intention was to reshape men, although each sex was to be softened and sensitized. Some proponents of the culture of sensibility claimed that women were capable of all things. Bernard Mandeville argued, there is no labor of the brain which women are not as capable of performing at least as well as men. Female sexuality was also emerging as a subject for scientific debate. Some theorists of sensibility argued that women as well as men had a sex drive, and the prominent feminist writer, Mandeville, believed that women had a sexual appetite that was as innate as that of men. He wrote at length of the role of the clitoris in female desire. The heroines of 18th century novels show that they wish for and need sexuality, but with a partner tested for civility, gentleness and mutuality. Novels were full of elopement and of clandestine correspondence between women avoiding authoritarian husbands and their lovers. With the emergence of woman's self-assertive consciousness came a concern over what was described as the woman of unbridled sexual sensibility, especially among literate women. One of the reasons that the novel came under attack was that reading them could sexually arouse women and this made marriages uncontrollable. There are a few portraits of 18th century women of this quality, painted in Britain, that are associated with the level of sexual scandal that this portrait of Lady Ligonier, and indeed its companion, engendered. Less than three months after the portraits were complete and while they were still on exhibition at the Royal Academy, Viscount Ligonier fought a duel in Green Park with his wife's lover, Vittorio Amedeo, Count Alfieri. Lady Ligonier fled to France, and the Viscount sued for divorce. Dueling was one of the practices that the culture of sensibility sought to outlaw. And in this sense, Viscount Ligonier failed the test of the man of sensibility. That role appears to have been taken up rather by Count Alfieri. Alfieri was a poet and playwright, today considered to be the founder of Italian tragedy, but his role in seducing Penelope Pitt and then leaving her would certainly not have qualified him as a true man of feeling. Gainsborough's own account of his production of the picture suggests that his hand was forced in accepting this commission and that he completed the pictures under some duress. A number of the features of this portrait of Lady Ligonier seem to suggest that Gainsborough witnessed the difficult relationship between his two sitters and made a subtle commentary upon it in his paintings. Viscountess Ligonier stares in a very determined way out of the picture plane and away from the viewer, refusing to meet our gaze. Her look is independent and aloof. Her manner so decisive that it might be described as defiant. Her attitude seems at odd with the demure and happy wife, or perhaps she is merely lost in determined thought. A number of writers have pointed out that Gainsborough includes a number of attributes associated with passion in his portrait. The shell motif prominently displayed upon the pedestal located behind her is a symbol of Venus, the goddess of love. And resting upon it is a statue of a naked dancing becant. Penelope Pitt is dressed in a Roman style costume of layered silks, the skirt of which she pulls with her right hand to her hip, revealing her petticoat. During the 1770s, bunching or draping the skirt up on the sides to reveal the petticoat became a popular device used by artists. This style was called a la polonaise, and Gainsborough clearly has Lady Ligonier here represented a la polonaise. All of these features, together with the determined expression on her face, might suggest that she has had, or will have her way in love, and that Gainsborough is here sexualizing Lady Ligonier, showing her as a fashionable and independent woman of her time. But her father George Pitt, Baron Rivers, who commissioned the picture, hung the portrait of his daughter in his house together with its pendant. The fact that he was able to do that suggests that there was nothing particularly provocative in the way his daughter had been represented. As despite the scandal surrounding her, he was happy to hang Gainsborough's portrait of her in the family estate. The portrait of her husband in which the mare is suggestively drawn and takes pride of place may also be a subtle commentary on Ligonier's neglect of his wife in favor of his horses. Is Gainsborough, in these subtle ways, sexing the canvas? What do you think? [MUSIC]
