Painting Faces Exhibition at Time & Tide Museum

Painting Faces: The Art of Flattery

Mrs Langtry (Lillie Langtry), 1879, by James John Chant. Image courtesy of the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

Running until June 19th, this fascinating exhibition explores the history and make-up and its portrayal in artworks from the Ancient Egyptians to Instagram.

Painting Faces: The Art of Flattery explores the fascinating history of the art of ‘making-up’. Featuring over 40 drawings, prints and objects from the collections of the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, the exhibition focuses on the history of make-up and its portrayal in artworks from the Ancient Egyptians to Instagram.

Today, the possibilities for cosmetic improvement seem infinite: from eyebrow tattooing and lip fillers, to make-up that ‘contours’, or ‘sculpts’, the face. Many online tutorials show how to make yourself up as famous beauties of the past, such as Cleopatra and Marie-Antoinette. Or if you prefer a more virtual form of flattery, how about using an app or ‘augmented reality’ filter to enhance your selfies?

People have been perfecting their faces since the very earliest times and, whether painting portraits or decorating human skin, they have used exactly the same materials: from kohl in ancient Egypt to white lead and carmine in 18th-century Europe. Painting Faces: The Art of Flattery, explores this need for ‘self-fashioning’ both on skin and canvas.

Featured in the exhibition, an Egyptian make-up palette, used for grinding green eye make-up, is displayed alongside a present-day eyeshadow set that is decorated with the phrase ‘Believe in your Selfie'. The ancient Egyptians used malachite and kohl as make-up and considered these materials to have protective powers. Artists used the same pigments in their inks and paints.

A selection of seventeenth-century prints from England and France explore European attitudes towards cosmetics and the fashions of the aristocracy. Portraitists themselves, especially those of fashionable women, were criticised for artificially enhancing their sitters, and a more natural style of beauty came to be valued. Emma Hart, mistress of Norfolk-born Admiral, Horatio Nelson, and muse to George Romney, epitomised the natural look in many of her portraits, one of which is featured in the exhibition 1970), brings the exhibition into the twentieth century, where Hollywood’s influence has made make-up almost universally acceptable, and mass-marketed cosmetics such as eye-shadow ‘palettes’ retain the link between makeup and painting. The exhibition is brought up to date with a video featuring local Great Yarmouth artist Adam Hummel putting on drag make-up before attending the 2019 Great Yarmouth Pride festival.

Exhibition Curator, Dr Caroline Palmer form the Ashmolean Museum said:

‘Despite growing awareness of the toxicity of their make-up, women and artists, continued to use them, often at terrible cost. In 1760 Maria Gunning, Lady Coventry, was reputedly killed by her addiction to white lead face paint. Often seen as a sign of sophistication, face paint was also criticised as being morally dubious. Face paint was a seductive mask associated with courtesans ‘Painted ladies’ and ‘macaroni gentlemen’ couldn't quite be trusted, and artists were associated with flattery and deceit.’

Seymour Dorothy Fleming, Lady Worsley, c.1780 - 1785, by John Russell, pastel on blue paper. Image courtesy of the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford