D’EON INVOKES JEANNE D’ARC IN A BID FOR PUBLIC ACCEPTANCE
BRADEL, Pierre-Jean-Baptiste. Charlotte-Geneviève-Louise-Auguste-Andrée-Timothée d’Eon de Beaumont, Chevalier [sic] de l’Ordre Royale et Militaire de Saint Louis… Aetatis 35. À la Mémoire des Héroines Françoises Jeanne d’Arc, Jeanne Hachette, &c, &c, &c. Dessiné et Gravé… d’apres nature et les Originaux communiqués par Mademoiselle d’Eon à ce Seul Artiste. Paris: chez l’Auteur [i.e. P. J. B. Bradel, ca. 1779]. 37.3 x 23.5 cm, trimmed to platemarks. Printed on thick, laid unwatermarked paper. Soiling to lower left corner of caption; a few scuff marks to borders; some toning overall; but a good survival of a rare ephemeral item.
Rare, separately-issued portrait of the Chevalière d’Eon dressed as a woman, proudly sporting her Order of Saint Louis (the highest French military decoration) on her chest, while also wearing a choker-style necklace, earrings, and a lace bonnet. The caption invokes France’s traditional cross-dressing military heroines Jeanne d’Arc and Jeanne Hachette (who had repelled an attack by Charles the Bold), with whom d’Eon clearly wished to be identified. In the canon of d’Eon portraiture, the present example is certainly uncommon, and is not held in any US collection as far as we have been able to trace it.
According to Kates (Monsieur D'Eon is a Woman, 2001) d’Eon took a strong personal interest in her own public image, and indeed had a hand in designing and sending to the press several engraved portraits of herself. “D’Eon reacted nervously to this mass distribution of his likeness. On the one hand, he collected those that he liked and even sent some to friends. But this was a publicity medium he could not control…”. It seems likely that the present engraving was part of d’Eon’s explicit campaign of self-promotion: according to the caption, Bradel engraved it “after the originals sent by Mademoiselle d’Eon to this artist alone”. The legend of the portrait adds further confusion: it claims to be depicting d’Eon at the age of just 35, i.e. in 1763, more than a decade before she began to live or dress publicly as a woman (around 1777); however, it seems unlikely that the original portrait mentioned by Bradel would have been painted of her in feminine attire at this early date.
For some modern scholars, d’Eon “was a man who cross-¬dressed as a woman but was widely understood in his own lifetime to have been a woman who cross-¬dressed as a man”. In context, according to McNeill, “occasional cross-¬dressing was a feature of court life at Paris. In the service of the king of France, d’Eon had attended masquerade balls at the court of Catherine the Great between 1756 and 1757, where men were required to dress as women and vice versa. However, it was only after he fled into British exile in the following decade that he is recorded as having appeared in women’s clothes in daily life. The fact that he was able to do so implies that he did not face immediate hostility for doing so even thought he was noted for his muscular physique and was not able to ‘pass’ as a woman with ease. However, he did face some hostility because of his nationality and the mounting panic over sodomy and effeminacy made his position rather more difficult. Thus his friendship with the politician John Wilkes became something of a liability when the latter began further to stir up the anti-¬sodomitical climate by attacking the king’s pardon for Captain Jones so as to draw attention from gossip that linked him with d’Eon as part of an alleged sodomitical cabal. By 1776–7, d’Eon was being accused of consorting with mollies (sodomites associated for cross-¬dressing) or even of being a molly himself”. (McNeil, A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion in the Age of Enlightenment).
The print is unrecorded in OCLC, and we have been unable to trace any US copy: it is specifically not held at the Yale Center for British Art, the Met Museum, or the Lewis Walpole Library. The British Museum holds only a different Bradel print depicting d’Eon as Captain of the Dragoons; and the National Portrait Gallery (UK) holds both Bradel prints, ascribing to them a date of 1779. The terminus ante quem for the engraving must be ca. 1792, as the publisher is described as operating in the “Maison de Mr. Desprez, Imprimeur du Roi”.
D’EON INVOKES JEANNE D’ARC IN A BID FOR PUBLIC ACCEPTANCE
BRADEL, Pierre-Jean-Baptiste. Charlotte-Geneviève-Louise-Auguste-Andrée-Timothée d’Eon de Beaumont, Chevalier [sic] de l’Ordre Royale et Militaire de Saint Louis… Aetatis 35. À la Mémoire des Héroines Françoises Jeanne d’Arc, Jeanne Hachette, &c, &c, &c. Dessiné et Gravé… d’apres nature et les Originaux communiqués par Mademoiselle d’Eon à ce Seul Artiste. Paris: chez l’Auteur [i.e. P. J. B. Bradel, ca. 1779]. 37.3 x 23.5 cm, trimmed to platemarks. Printed on thick, laid unwatermarked paper. Soiling to lower left corner of caption; a few scuff marks to borders; some toning overall; but a good survival of a rare ephemeral item.
Rare, separately-issued portrait of the Chevalière d’Eon dressed as a woman, proudly sporting her Order of Saint Louis (the highest French military decoration) on her chest, while also wearing a choker-style necklace, earrings, and a lace bonnet. The caption invokes France’s traditional cross-dressing military heroines Jeanne d’Arc and Jeanne Hachette (who had repelled an attack by Charles the Bold), with whom d’Eon clearly wished to be identified. In the canon of d’Eon portraiture, the present example is certainly uncommon, and is not held in any US collection as far as we have been able to trace it.
According to Kates (Monsieur D'Eon is a Woman, 2001) d’Eon took a strong personal interest in her own public image, and indeed had a hand in designing and sending to the press several engraved portraits of herself. “D’Eon reacted nervously to this mass distribution of his likeness. On the one hand, he collected those that he liked and even sent some to friends. But this was a publicity medium he could not control…”. It seems likely that the present engraving was part of d’Eon’s explicit campaign of self-promotion: according to the caption, Bradel engraved it “after the originals sent by Mademoiselle d’Eon to this artist alone”. The legend of the portrait adds further confusion: it claims to be depicting d’Eon at the age of just 35, i.e. in 1763, more than a decade before she began to live or dress publicly as a woman (around 1777); however, it seems unlikely that the original portrait mentioned by Bradel would have been painted of her in feminine attire at this early date.
For some modern scholars, d’Eon “was a man who cross-¬dressed as a woman but was widely understood in his own lifetime to have been a woman who cross-¬dressed as a man”. In context, according to McNeill, “occasional cross-¬dressing was a feature of court life at Paris. In the service of the king of France, d’Eon had attended masquerade balls at the court of Catherine the Great between 1756 and 1757, where men were required to dress as women and vice versa. However, it was only after he fled into British exile in the following decade that he is recorded as having appeared in women’s clothes in daily life. The fact that he was able to do so implies that he did not face immediate hostility for doing so even thought he was noted for his muscular physique and was not able to ‘pass’ as a woman with ease. However, he did face some hostility because of his nationality and the mounting panic over sodomy and effeminacy made his position rather more difficult. Thus his friendship with the politician John Wilkes became something of a liability when the latter began further to stir up the anti-¬sodomitical climate by attacking the king’s pardon for Captain Jones so as to draw attention from gossip that linked him with d’Eon as part of an alleged sodomitical cabal. By 1776–7, d’Eon was being accused of consorting with mollies (sodomites associated for cross-¬dressing) or even of being a molly himself”. (McNeil, A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion in the Age of Enlightenment).
The print is unrecorded in OCLC, and we have been unable to trace any US copy: it is specifically not held at the Yale Center for British Art, the Met Museum, or the Lewis Walpole Library. The British Museum holds only a different Bradel print depicting d’Eon as Captain of the Dragoons; and the National Portrait Gallery (UK) holds both Bradel prints, ascribing to them a date of 1779. The terminus ante quem for the engraving must be ca. 1792, as the publisher is described as operating in the “Maison de Mr. Desprez, Imprimeur du Roi”.