acknowledgments The authors are indebted to Susan Shames and the staff at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Library, to the staff at the Bryn Mawr University Library, and to Jim Green of the Library Company of Philadelphia for their generous research assistance. Similar research help was provided by Martha Halpern and Jack Lindsey of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and by Luke Beckerdite of the Chipstone Foundation. Thanks also to the curatorial staff at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation for their suggestions and to Albert Sack, Colin Bailey, and Naomi Miller for providing photographs. This essay was read by William Park of Sarah Lawrence College, George Hersey of Yale University, Barbara Carson of the College of William & Mary, Robert Blair St. George of the University of Pennsylvania, Graham S. Hood of Colonial Williamsburg, and Jules D. Prown of Yale University. Their thoughtful suggestions are deeply appreciated. Finally, our deepest gratitude goes to Katherine Hemple Prown of the College of William & Mary, whose technical and intellectual contributions to this work are immeasurable.
1. Though often thought of as a creation of the Victorian period, the term highboy, along with tall boy, can be documented in an eighteenth-century British context, most often in reference to a tall chest of drawers. The term’s use in America, and in particular in Philadelphia, is not recorded. For insight into the possible cultural and phrenological significance of the terms “highboy” and “lowboy,” see Lawrence W. Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988). The foliated carving that adorns the tympana and drawers on many Philadelphia high chests is often associated with a rococo sense of delicacy and flow; however, this type of ornamentation is usually symmetrical and mirrors sixteenth- and seventeenth-century published designs. For examples, see Rudolf Berliner and Gerhart Egger, Ornamentale Vorlageblätter: Des 15. Bis. 19 Jahrhunderts (Leipzig: Klinkardt & Bierman, 1926). Morrison Heckscher and Leslie Greene Bowman, American Rococo: Elegance in Ornament, 1750–1775 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1992), pp. 191–93, fig. 129. Another well-known Philadelphia slab table (Metropolitan Museum of Art) is more in line with conventional continental rococo expression. Its rococo character is also revealed in the central carved figure on the skirt, a figure recently described by Heckscher and Bowman as a “plump-cheeked girl, indefinably oriental in character” (Heckscher and Bowman, American Rococo, p. 192). Though the unacknowledged prototype for the girl holding a bird, found on a pier glass design in the 1st edition of Thomas Chippendale’s The Furniture and Cabinet Maker’s Director (pl. 146), does appear to be Oriental, the Philadelphia interpretation clearly depicts a Caucasian. Moreover, she is dressed in common mid-eighteenth-century theatrical garb, which this essay will argue is more in keeping with the prominent rococo use of costume as a means of attaining role reversal, deception, and surprise. Although some British objects directly reflect the continental rococo style, the vast majority reflect the tempered British taste.
2. John Dixon Hunt, Garden and Grove, The Italian Renaissance Garden in the English Imagination: 1600–1750 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 182–83. For example, Thomas Chippendale’s The Gentleman and Cabinetmaker’s Director (London, 1754), long considered a “rococo” design book, is centered around a knowledge of the ideals of classical architecture. Chippendale largely ignored the meaning of the continental rococo style. After about 1730 the high chest was out of fashion in London. Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth (New York: Doubleday, 1988), pp. 3–5.
3. William Park, The Idea of Rococo (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992), pp. 11–13, 19. Paul-Gabriel Boucé, Sexuality in Eighteenth-Century England (Manchester, Eng.: Manchester University Press, 1982), p. 6.
4. Park, Idea of Rococo, p. 19. Colin Bailey, Loves of the Gods: Mythic Painting From Watteau to David (New York: Rizzoli, 1992), pp. 372–76.
5. For a full analysis of the metaphorical themes of The Swing, see Donald Posner, “The Swinging Women of Watteau and Fragonard,” Art Bulletin (March 1982): 75–88. Dore Ashton, Fragonard in the Universe of Painting (Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988), p. 15. Mary D. Sheriff, Fragonard: Art and Eroticism (Chicago: University Press of Chicago, 1990), p. 109. This suggests alternative meanings for the English word “rake,” for example as used by William Hogarth in his widely distributed series of engravings titled The Rake’s Progress.
6. Witold Rybczynski, Home: A Short History of an Idea (New York: Penguin Books, 1987), pp. 94–95. There are few rococo buildings, and those that exist are in Europe; see Park, Idea of Rococo, pp. 32, 52–55. Witold Rybczynski suggests that a crucial difference exists between French and British rococo interior style, namely that the latter was aimed at “gentlemen.” British cabinetmakers took it for granted that women would have no interest in furniture and furnishings, and the increasing role of women as arbiters of taste and decoration in Great Britain only began to emerge toward the end of the rococo period; see Rybczynski, Home, pp. 116–17. Sheriff, Fragonard, pp. 27–29, 107. Sheriff notes a symposium on this topic, “Social Implications of the Rococo Style: Images of Women,” held at the University of Missouri, October 1987.
7. Rybczynski, Home, pp. 92-95. C. T. Carr, “Two Words in Art History: II. Rococo,” Forum for Modern Language Studies 1, (1965): 267. Michael Snodin, ed., Rococo: Art and Design in Hogarth’s England (London: Trefoil Books, 1984), p. 27. Heckscher and Bowman, American Rococo, p. 1.
8. For the purposes of this article, the term grotto will be used exclusively, although throughout western literature the word “cave” has been used interchangeably. Naomi Miller, Heavenly Caves: Reflections on the Garden Grotto (New York: George Braziller, 1982), p. 7.
9. Geoffrey Galt Harpham, On the Grotesque: Strategies of Contradiction in Art and Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), pp. 23–30. Miller, Caves, pp. 7, 59. Barbara Walker, The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1983), pp. 355–57.
10. Miller, Caves, pp. 15, 20, 33, 119. Park, Idea of Rococo, pp. 89–91. Pope first published the poem with two cantos in 1712; in 1714 it was enlarged to include five cantos. Rhys Issac, “The First Monticello,” in Jeffersonian Legacies, edited by Peter S. Onuf (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993). At the time of his marriage Jefferson had not yet started the project, and he seemingly lost interest in the idea thereafter.
11. Walker, Encyclopedia, pp. 1035–37. Many gods and goddesses, like the Hindu goddess Kali, are both creators and destroyers.
12. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. On its own, the theme of hunting or pursuing represents a common sexual metaphor. For example, Fragonard’s painting The Pursuit, from the four canvases titled The Progress of Love, depicts a young man aggressively tracking a young woman. Thanks to William Park for this reading of Mondon. For more on the use of dogs as erotic symbols in rococo art, see Donald Posner, Watteau: A Lady at Her Toilet (London: Penguin Books, 1973), pp. 76–83. Jane Sharp, The Midwive’s Book (London, 1671), cited in Antonia Fraser, The Weaker Vessel (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), p. 51. Many of these images of impotency emerged in Bavaria, where Elector Max III Joseph declared in 1770 the official end of the rococo style.
13. Some auricular cartouches merge the genital features with interpenetrating monsters, grotesques, and animals. Others have shell-like parts that nevertheless are decidedly skeletal and specifically pelvic in shape. E. H. Gombrich, The Sense of Order: A Study in the Psychology of Decorative Art (New York: Cornell University Press, 1984), pp. 241–42. Both the peanut and kidney bean are thematically associated with the rococo and are common sexual metaphors. For example, “fava,” the Italian word for bean, also is a slang term for female genitalia; for rococo connection, see this essay. Miller, Caves, p. 123. Gombrich, Sense of Order, pp. 6–9, 279.
14. Dawson Papers, Library of Congress, Microfilm Manuscripts Collection, Washington, D.C. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (New York: Orion Press, 1964), p. 78. Bachelard sees similar attributes in desks and wardrobes. William Macpherson Horner, Blue Book of Philadelphia Furniture: William Penn to George Washington, (1935; reprint ed., Alexandria: Highland House Publishers, 1988), pp. 110–11.
15. Jules D. Prown, “The Truth of Material Culture: History or Fiction,” in History From Things, edited by Steven Lubar and W. David Kingery (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), p. 3.
16. Such anthropomorphic parallels suggest the possibility for a new reading of other rococo forms, notably looking glasses and tall case clocks. A matching high chest for the dressing table has not yet been identified. For more on gender and furniture, see Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “Furniture as Social History: Gender, Property, and Memory in the Decorative Arts,” in American Furniture, edited by Luke Beckerdite and William Hosley, (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 1995), pp. 39–69.
17. Bailey, Loves of the Gods, pp. 422–27, pl. 50 and fig. 5. Male costumes during the Renaissance often included a codpiece in the form of a shell. Bachelard, Poetics, p. 107. Miller, Caves, p. 20. Sheriff, Fragonard, p. 190. Boucé, Sexuality, p. 9. Roy Porter, “The Secrets of Generation Display’d: Aristotle’s Masterpiece in Eighteenth-Century England,” in Unauthorized Sexuality in Eighteenth-Century England, edited by Robert P. McCubin, a special issue of Eighteenth-Century Life 9 (May 1985): 7. Stephen Jay Gould, “The Anatomy Lesson,” Natural History 104, no. 12 (December 1995): 10–15. The authors thank Michelle Erickson for calling this reference to their attention. Robinet saw this as but one of the many examples of how nature “has multiplied models of the generative organs, in view of the importance of these organs” (J. B. Robinet, Philosophical Views on the Natural Gradation of Forms of Existence, or the Attempts Made By Nature While Learning to Create Humanity [Amsterdam, 1768], cited in Bachelard, Poetics, p. 114).
18. For more on gender attributes of rococo versus baroque, see Miller, Caves, p. 113. Candace Clements, “Unexpected Consequences: The Councours de Peinture of 1727 and History Painting in Early Eighteenth-Century Paris” (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, Department of Art History, 1992), UMI 93-08969. Toby Ditz, “Shipwrecked: Imperilled Masculinity and the Culture of Risk among Philadelphia’s Eighteenth-Century Merchants,” paper presented to the Department of History, Johns Hopkins University, January 1993. Thanks to Anne Verplank and Robert Blair St. George for providing this reference.
19. Park, Idea of Rococo, pp. 23–34, 46, 96–106. Linda Colley, “The English Rococo: Historical Background,” in Rococo: Art and Design in Hogarth’s England, (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1984), pp. 10–17.
20. During the 1760s, a large selection of “newly discovered” writings by Ossian were published by James Macpherson, writings that were fraudulently produced by Macpherson himself. Jean Starobinski, “Le Mythe au XVIIIe siècle” in Critique, (November 1977): 977. For examples of this classical learning trend in Philadelphia, see Edwin Wolf, The Book Culture of a Colonial American City: Philadelphia Books, Bookmen, and Booksellers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), pp. 171–72. Although beyond the scope of this study, it would be useful to trace documented high chests to see if more conservative or orthodox owners consciously avoided the ornate, rococo forms. This concept was examined by Deborah Federen in a lecture delivered at the Williamsburg Antiques Forum in 1992. Federen noted parallels between the ownership of Philadelphia rococo furniture and participation in the Revolutionary cause. In contrast, the ownership of more restrained architectonic forms was apparently linked to neutral or Loyalist owners. This theory cannot be statistically validated, however, because for every owner whose allegiance is documented there are many others whose political preferences are not known.
21. Other mythological panels on high chests display scenes from Aesop’s Fables, highly moralistic tales that are a part of classical mythology. There is no compelling evidence that identifies this figure as Madame de Pompadour. For another Philadelphia case piece with a female bust, see J. Michael Flanigan, American Furniture from the Kaufman Collection (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1986), pp. 90–93. Equally suggestive of the gender of certain objects is the fact that Philadelphia desk-and-bookcases, a form commonly associated with male activities, most often have carved busts of male figures. No high chests with original carved busts of men are known, rather, high chests typically have baskets of flowers, birds, or cartouches—all motifs with strong feminine associations. For illustrations of some of these ornaments, see Bowman and Heckscher, American Rococo, pp. 207–8, figs. 144–46. The “Pompadour” high chest is illustrated in Heckscher and Bowman, American Rococo, pp. 202–3, fig. 48 and pl. 138.
22. Hersey, The Lost Meaning of Classical Architecture: Speculation on Ornament from Vetruvis to Venturi (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988), p. 1. David Bayne, “Proportions of Philadelphia Rococo Casepieces,” unpublished paper presented to the Furniture Conservation Program, Smithsonian Institution, 1990. Hersey, Lost Meaning, p. 4.
23. Hersey, Lost Meaning, pp. 4, 20–45.
24. Park, Idea of Rococo, p. 84. Harpham, Grotesque, pp. 38–39.
25. Thanks to Jules D. Prown for suggesting the William Williams connection.
26. Sheriff, Fragonard, pp. 26–29.
27. Campbell, Power of Myth, p. xiv. |