Robert Cruikshank, designer

Robert Cruikshank's hand-colored etchings are ruthless, comical jabs at the dandy "species." This grouping shows the dandy out and about in the city-at the tea shop, lounging in the opera box, on promenade-and always the butt of a joke. Cruikshank draws attention to the exaggerated components of fashionable menswear of the late 1810s, including corseted waists so severely constricted that one opera attendee has suffered a fainting fit, a malady typically perceived as feminine. With these caricatures, the Cruikshanks successfully imprinted on the popular imagination the image of the dandy as not only effete, but also one so devoted to appearance as to be devoid of brain and character. While to modern eyes these caricatures might suggest a prejudiced connection between dandyism, effeminacy, and homosexuality, such conflations were not made until after the criminal trial of Oscar Wilde, more than 70 years later.