Reading Visual Art: 196 Hats of fashion

The world still looks to Paris for the height of fashion in clothing, a phenomenon already well-established by the late nineteenth century. This of course included hats, and in this second article on the reading of hats in paintings, I show a selection of works illustrating fashionable headwear of that period. These are the works of just five painters who seem, in one way or another, to have specialised in fashionable women’s headwear: Georges Clairin, Jean Béraud, Pierre-Georges Jeanniot, Henri Gervex and Edgar Degas.

Georges Clairin (1843–1919), Elegant Couple at the Coast (date not known), oil on canvas, 65 x 54 cm, location not known. Wikimedia Commons.

Georges Clairin’s undated Elegant Couple at the Coast comes not from the Rococo, but as indicated by the painterly style of the slippery rocks, was most probably painted in the early years of the twentieth century. It’s a study of one of the few disadvantages of hats, particularly extensive fashionable adornments, in their behaviour in wind. The very pink young galante woman is a textbook example of how to make a figure look windswept, although her partner seems mysteriously to be unaffected by the breeze.

The English word for specialists in fashionable hats for women, milliner, comes from that for an inhabitant of Milan, one of the former centres of the hat trade in Europe. Milliners and their shops were associated with the height of fashion, and drew the attention of Edgar Degas among others.

Edgar Degas (1834–1917), The Millinery Shop (1879/86), oil on canvas, 100 x 110.7 cm, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL. Wikimedia Commons.

Degas looked carefully at one of the delights of the middle and upper class modern woman, the selection of hats in The Millinery Shop (1879/86). Here he also experiments with unusual views and cropping, as he examines the tricky process of assessing and choosing a hat.

Jean Béraud (1849–1935), The Milliner on the Champs Elysées (year not known), oil on canvas, 45.1 × 34.9 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

Around this fashionably-dressed Milliner on the Champs Elysées, Jean Béraud carefully balances painterly background foliage and sky, and the atmospheric detail of distant carriages. His Milliner on the Pont des Arts from 1879-82 (below) shows the same model drawing admiring looks on a windy day by the River Seine.

Jean Béraud (1849–1935), Milliner on the Pont des Arts (1879-82), oil on panel, 37.5 × 56 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.
Pierre-Georges Jeanniot (1848–1934), At the Milliner (1901), oil on canvas, 54.5 x 81.5 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

Pierre-Georges Jeanniot’s At the Milliner (1901) contrasts with those of Degas in its relatively fine detail, and his use of mirror play to show the milliner herself, at the right. His swirling hats, and the huge ginger cat, are marvellous.

Henri Gervex (1852–1929), Five Hours at Paquin’s (1906), oil on canvas, 260 x 172.7 cm, location not known. Wikimedia Commons.

Millinery was one of the staples of fashion houses like that of Paquin, whose success was characteristic of the late nineteenth century, and shown in Henri Gervex’s Five Hours at Paquin’s from 1906.

Pierre-Georges Jeanniot (1848–1934), The Ritz Hôtel, Paris (1908), further details not known. Wikimedia Commons.

The purpose of these expensive hand-made hats was for show, when the lady was seen in appropriate surroundings. Jeanniot’s painting of the patrons of one of the most fashionable hotels in Paris shows all the hats out on parade in the fine weather in the inner garden of the Paris Ritz.

Others captured the role of hats to those heading downward through society.

Jean Béraud (1849–1935), The Letter (1908), oil on canvas, 45.7 × 37.2 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

In Béraud’s The Letter (1908) the man looks rough and is unshaven, although the woman is elegantly dressed, and apparently engaged in writing a letter. In front of each of them is a glass of absinthe, notorious for its association with alcoholism. His battered old brown bowler hat suggests a working past before he succumbed to drink.

Although I’ve concentrated almost exclusively on hats seen in Europe on the head of Europeans, the nineteenth century was also a time when hats from overseas were becoming more frequent sights.

Georges Clairin (1843–1919), An Ouled Naïl Woman (date not known), further details not known. Wikimedia Commons.

Georges Clairin’s paintings of Ouled Naïl women provide glimpses of those from this nomadic group from the foothills of the Atlas Mountains. Exotic they certainly are, with elaborate headwear, richly decorated clothing, and no doubt over their identity.

Of all the artists of this period, it was Clairin who appears to have been most fascinated by hats.

Georges Clairin (1843–1919), Bust of a Woman in Profile (1899), further details not known. Wikimedia Commons.

His extraordinary Bust of a Woman in Profile (1899) is perhaps a sea-nymph, wearing the most bizarre headgear that appears to have grown from coral. It has peculiar pedicles which sweep over her hair, and excrescences resembling the bodies of fabulous birds, making it the ultimate hat of them all.