Johann Martin Will (1727-1806) (engraver)
Et l'Amerique Aussi Recoit Les Modes Nouvelles
[And America Also Receives the Latest Styles]
Augsburg?: Late 18th Century
Copper-plate engraving
9 x 11 inches, overall
8 x 10.75 inches, platemark
Sold, please inquire as to the availability of similar items.
French Caricature of American Hairstyles
Satire of 18th Century Style
Satire of 18th Century Style
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Satirical genre print from the viewpoint of Europeans making fun of the 18th-century version of American women with "big hair." The pretensions of provincial nouveau riches attempting to emulate chic European aristocrats are lampooned in the accompanying poem.
Two women wear lavish gowns that are only outdone by their enormous headresses - one carries a small palm tree on her head and the other a sweeping arrangement of bird plumes with beads dangling from it, surmounted by ribbons and shells.
They are accompanied by a dark-skinned male servant and a crouching aristocratic man, both wearing smaller, but equally ludicrous, powdered wigs. An elephant stands with them. The poem alludes to the use of tusks and trunks for decoration -- the servant and one of the women have tusks extending from the backs of their heads and the other man has an elephant's trunk corkscrewing from the back of his head.
The raw materials for these fashion accessories lay piled on the ground: more tusks, seashells, coral, a scorpion and tropical fruit. The plate is numbered in the lower center, and so may have been part of a series or collection.
A poem in French along the top and German at the bottom accompanies the illustration:
Et l'Amerique aussi recoit les modes nouvelles,
Comme l'on peut raisonner des coeffures lustreuses.
Les Dames, qui songera a cela & font la parade,
Par de plumes bigarreès et de palmes figureès.
L'Amant se pique une fois d'en decouvrir les fautes,
Il'en emplit l'espace par de coquilles trés belles.
Il faut que l'elephant y prete ses dents son trompe,
S'il plait aux hommes à se coeffuer a la mode.
[And America also receives the latest styles,
With, as you'd expect, the lustrous coiffures.
The ladies dream them up and show them off,
Multi-colored plumes and figured palms.
Where the vexed lover once found flaws,
The space is now filled with beautiful seashells.
It is necessary for the elephant to lend its tusks, its trunk,
If men like to style their hair according to fashion.]
Johann Martin Will was a German artist, engraver and printmaker, who was born and died in Augsburg, a major European center of publishing and engraving during the 18th century.