More Suite101 blog reposting....I’ve always loved the chapter from Edith Wharton’s 1905 novel The House of Mirth, where ladies of New York society take part in an evening of "living pictures" or tableaux vivants. For the entertainment of their guests, and for the presumed showcasing of themselves, the costumed women pose within sets designed to resemble classic paintings. These illusions depend "not only on the happy disposal of lights and the delusive-interposition of layers of gauze, but on a corresponding adjustment of the mental vision. To unfurnished minds they remain, in spite of every enhancement of art, only a superior kind of wax-works; but to the responsive fancy they may give magic glimpses of the boundary world between fact and imagination."
By this point in the novel, we’ve become familiar with the female characters and to link some of them with art is aesthetically fun — and a nice fictional device by Edith Wharton. We know about the translucent-skinned "frailer Dutch type" of old New York money, perfect for bringing a van Dyck to life. We also know about the resourceful and resilient Carry Fisher, who despite being a divorcee when divorce was still questioned has managed to keep herself within society circles. With her earthy dark looks she becomes one of Goya’s women for the night, from the "exaggerated glow of her eyes" to the "provocation of her frankly-painted smile."
Then there’s Lily Bart,
The House of Mirth’s heroine — beautiful, capricious, determined to find a rich husband yet not quite calculating and manipulative enough to pull that feat off. Lily chooses Sir Joshua Reynolds’ Mrs. Lloyd as her tableau, knowing that its simpler lines and similarity to her own loveliness will be a show-stopper. Which it is, and Lily is a true vision — with some of the men of course wondering privately about whether she’s got any underwear on beneath those "pale draperies" that outline "dryad-like curves."
The tableaux evening is a high point in Lily’s otherwise troubled quest to become one of New York's truly powerful society women — and to no doubt eventually have her own beautiful, slightly haughty portrait painted by John Singer Sargent.
Pictured: La Maja Vestida (Francisco de Goya, ca. 1800) & Mrs. Richard Bennett Lloyd (Sir Joshua Reynolds, ca. 1775) -- click on each painting to get a closer look
