Ode on the Eighteenth Century

A collection of images, quotations, and sources for students of 18th-century Britain and beyond. 

[icecreamwithjackdaniels]

Pieter Casteels III (Flemish, 1684–1749), "A Peacock, Chickens, Pigeons and other Birds in a Landscape" (details)

[feminineforms]

"A woman and a cat" (ca. 1793) by Kitagawa Utamaro

[franklawrencegaard]

1783 Utamaro

[d3utschem4rk]

Marie-Antoinette, reine de France (detail)

by Jean-Baptiste André Gautier d’Agoty (French, 1740 – 1786) oil on canvas, 1775

Château de Versailles

[alexandreanarchive]

Sibylla Aegyptia

British School ~ 1750

[granstromjulius]

Jean-Honoré Fragonard

[centuriespast]

Mrs Mary Robinson (Perdita) Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) The Wallace Collection

[metmuseum]

Drawing for a Wall-Decoration. 18th century. Credit line: The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1949 https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/340298

[charnel-grounds]

“The diabolical maskquerade, or the dragons-feast as acted by the Hell-Fire-Club, at Somerset House in the Strand”

‘Thus impious wretches, without fear or shame, feast and sing praises in the Devil’s name...’

unknown artist, British school, c. 1721

[random-brushstrokes]

Marguerite Gérard & Jean-Honoré Fragonard - Le chat angora (ca. 1780s)

[mahgnib]

Unknown Mexican Artist, “Human Races”, 18th Century

[frostedmagnolias]

Chatelaine with Watch

18th century, French

gold, gilt metal, agate, rock crystal

The Walters Art Museum

[nemfrog]

Pleiades, Orion, Ursa Minor. Physique sacrée, ou, Histoire-naturelle de la Bible. 1732.

Internet Archive

From a book uploaded by lolliffe

[artschoolglasses]

Portrait of Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, christian Friedrich Zincke, 1722

[centuriespast]

Madame de Pompadour (1721–1764), Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson François Boucher (1703–1770) (attributed to) National Galleries of Scotland: National

[historicalbookimages]

🦀 Poissons, ecrevisses et crabes, de diverses couleurs et figures extraordinaires, . A Amsterdam, Chez Reinier & Josué Ottens, 1754.. Original source Image description: Historical illustration titled “Poissons, ecrevisses et crabes,” depicting five stylized aquatic creatures in vivid colors. The largest figure (#35) resembles a crab with an exaggerated rounded brown body, bright orange, yellow, and blue fan-like fins, and intricate floral and claw details. Surrounding it are four fish-like creatures (#36, #37, #38, #39), each shown in distinct bright patterns and shapes: a beige fish with blue dots and green fins, a blue-green elongated fish with a striped head, a speckled clam-shaped creature with extended limbs, and a small yellow fish with red and black markings. French descriptive text accompanies each figure. The artwork combines imaginative shapes with scientific annotation.

[artssie]

Titania and Bottom (c.1790) by Johann Heinrich Füssli

[useless-catalanfacts]

Early 18th century book for learning arithmetic and other topics related to science and mathematics, including military engineering and astronomy. Handwritten in the Catalan language in Barcelona (Catalonia's capital city).

The title means "Speculation and theorems of arithmetic", and what's written below it in the cover means "for teaching and doctrine. By Joseph Bolló junior, young grocery shop keeper, who starts this book today the 7th of January of the year 1714".

The book includes mathematical problems related to the job of a grocery shop keeper, but also observations that he saw. A curious page is the one where he draws the meteorite that fell in Southern France on Christmas day of 1704 (the penultimate image in this post). This meteorite was so bright that it was seen from Barcelona, and many texts and drawings from the time describe how people were horrified at seeing this huge ball of fire fall to the Earth. Here is the translation of how Josep Bolló describes it in this page: "Sign of Heaven which, with a great uproar, appeared above on the 25th, Christmas Day, of the year 1705* at 5 in the afternoon. It was a very horrifying thing because the sky was very clear and calm, as well as for the huge noise and shining that it did", and he goes on to explain how it was interpreted as an omen for the bad times that were to come: the War of Spanish Succession, that would end with the terribly cruel Siege of Barcelona that lasted between July 1713 and the 11th of September of 1714 , with Catalonia's defeat and the subsequent military occupation of Catalonia by Castilla/Spain.

*Note: Josep Bolló and many other sources of the time said this meteorite was seen in 1705 instead of 1704 because back then Christmas Day was considered the 1st day of the next year. But, if we call by with our modern calendar, it was the 25th of December of 1704.

The young shop keeper survived both the siege and the horrible political persecution of Catalans that followed it, and he continued writing his book. Some pages show his observations of it, related to mathematics. For example, the last image in this post is a drawing of what a part of Barcelona's wall looked like before the siege and how it looked like after the attack, before being destroyed to build the Citadel, as he wrote in the page.

Source: Manuscripts collection of the University of Barcelona.