Hatless and fancy-free

In the matter of hats, one thing has not yet been addressed: that, beneath all those hats - tricorn, bicorn or just plain floppy - your average gentleman would have been sporting a wig.

Wigs are a fascinating subject and deserve a number of posts to themselves. If fashion is a language, the 18th century developed an entire semiotics of wigs.

If you were poor or a child, however, you wore your own hair, which was a statement in itself. As we can see, the lad in Chardin's The Governess below has had his hair combed into the same style as the wig his papa would be sporting. (Note, by the way, the lovely detail of the hat, a particularly fine silver-ribbon trimmed tricorn):

But what, pray, lay beneath the wig?

Well, most gentlemen would shudder at the thought of revealing that to anyone but his intimate family and his dressing-table mirror, but artists are hardy souls, always pushing the envelope (for artists who POST the envelope, see John Coombes Unstuck Diaries).

Below we can see William Hogarth and Jean Simeon Chardin, contemporaries across the Channel. Their skulls are shaved, but they are at home.

Feeling relaxed.

The wig...

... is off.

They want to disturb cosy conventionality.

So they invite us, the viewer, into their private world, their wigless intimacy.

Hogarth, padding about the house with his pug for company, appears to have sported a soft velvety beret arrangement.

Chardin did not paint himself until he was 72. When he did, he decided to show himself unbolstered by brocade, wig, and expensive fripperies. He is wearing his glasses, soft comfortable clothing and a cotton headscarf bound with a ribbon, and, sometimes, a draughtsman's eyeshade. Stripped of his defences, he is ready to work.

And the honesty of these portraits, the nakedness of these men without hats or wigs, the bald, vulnerable humanity of them, stares timelessly at us down through the centuries.