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Williamsburg museum documents how colonial celebrities were remembered

A mezzotint of Elizabeth Gunning, Duchess of Hamilton and Argyll.
Photo by Jason B. Copes
A mezzotint of Elizabeth Gunning, Duchess of Hamilton and Argyll.

People probably didn’t use the word “celebrity” in the 18th century, but art of well-known people of that time does give us ideas about what it means to be famous, researchers said.

Long before Swiftie was a word and Lady Gaga recorded her first song, we were fascinated by trendsetters.

“Celebrity isn’t really a word they would have used in the 18th century,” said Katie McKinney, curator of maps and prints for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. “But we can look there for the genesis of art for 19th century ideas of what it meant to be famous beyond your circle of acquaintances.”

McKinney’s vision and curiosity is behind the exhibition “Celebrity in Print,” which officially opened at the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Art Museum, one of The Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg, in early November. The 30 works that comprise the exhibit illustrate the impact celebrities had on material culture.

Kings and queens, military figures, performers and politicians, writers and even criminals became household names in the 17th and 18th centuries. The London newspapers wrote about the rich, famous and important, and those stories were often picked up by the Virginia Gazette.

Expansion of the printed word and image provided both a demand and an access, McKinney said, “that gave rise to this phenomenon of being able to know and read about famous people.”

The original engravings in the exhibit reveal techniques of some of the most talented practitioners. Mezzotint, for example, allowed for soft gradations in tone, creating a luxury look with luminous whites emerging from a velvety blackness.

Perrine Le Saux, associate paper conservator at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, spent more than 400 hours preparing the engravings for display.

“Some didn’t need any attention because they had already been framed and were stable,” she said. “Some needed a tear mended or had just a little bit of ink loss that needed to be inpainted to reintegrate the image.”

One was a particular challenge.

Le Saux logged approximately 100 hours on the sizable engraving of King William III, reducing its major stains and stabilizing the paper that was fairly brittle along the edges.

“It was engraved in the late 17th century,” McKinney said. “It was made on a really large copper plate and copper was expensive. And the engraver was very, very skilled in technique.”

Alongside it hangs a portrait of his wife, Queen Mary II – yes, they are the William and Mary of collegiate fame. Fittingly, the monarchs open the timeline of the exhibit.

Some engravings are of regular people who became celebrities for “extraordinary” things. Had Margaret Patten come along today, she very well might be in a Got Milk campaign ad. Patten claimed to be 136 years old, attributing her longevity to consuming milk (and sometimes a little ale). The mezzotint engraving of her dates to 1737 and is based on a portrait painted at the request of local officials to hang in a workhouse.

It’s fun to see the emergence of caricature, too. Due to strict English libel laws, rarely were the people identified in these exaggerated images, though clever artists found ways around that.

“Part of the fun was trying to guess and figure out who was being satirized,” McKinney said.

Of course, theater created fandom for performers and actors, often shown in prints wearing costumes or striking poses familiar to those who saw them live. A soft paste porcelain figure of Henry Woodward, beloved for his comic and pantomime, is from his role in the play “Lethe.” Though the play never made it to the colonies, it was performed in larger U.S. cities.

The exhibit will undergo more than one rotation and be on display through Nov. 8, 2025.

The Dewitt Wallace Decorative Art Museum is part of the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg. Hours, tickets and more information can be found online.

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