Alexandra Hobdy
A woman in white hovers in mid-air and moves towards us from this painting, which is one of the much-loved portraits at Chatsworth. However, let’s put its fame to one side, so we can reconnect with this work.
This is not an example of the male gaze, as we might expect, as the sitter and artist are women. Traditionally, the interest in them both has been with their high-society Regency lives. The sitter, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (1757–1806), and the artist, Maria Hadfield Cosway (1760–1838), were highly visible figures and their lives were often defined by interactions with men – their husbands, lovers, friends, patrons, and chroniclers.
A contemporary print reproducing the painting includes a globe beneath Georgiana’s feet. She is then, a space traveller, as much of science fiction as poetic fiction. Whether the globe was ever part of the painting remains to be determined but, rather than the dreamy poetic, let’s imagine this instead as a dialogue in recognising women’s power. Instead of the biographical contexts that often frame this painting, I propose seeing this painting as a moment in time, when two young and intelligent women chose to converse about the representation of self. In 1782, when this painting was made, Georgiana was twenty-five and the artist twenty-two.
At first, the painting is overwhelming in its fantasy. Cynthia is the goddess of the moon – Diana, by another name. Her crescent headdress reminds us of this, as do her gauzy clothes and classical sandals. This representation draws on a few lines from Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, an epic poem written in the 1590s, where Cynthia breaks forth from clouds and illuminates the world. Perhaps it is the bright determination of this portrait that caused Georgiana’s son, the sixth Duke of Devonshire, to say that of all the paintings of her, it was most like his mother.
Both Georgiana and Cosway were proponents of educating women – later in her life Cosway set up schools in France and Italy; Georgiana was committed to the education of her daughters as much as her sons. Both painter and sitter had intellects that outstripped the confines of their time – their interests in science, language, politics, and music were shared. This painting then, shows the cusp of that mature life; one shaped by the conventions and connections of the time, but also pushing against it, much as Cynthia pushes away the clouds.
January 2022
