Tight Lacing or Hold Fast Behind
March 1, 1777
Medium
Hand-colored etching and engraving
Dimensions
plate: 13 3/4 x 9 11/16 in. (35 x 24.6 cm) sheet: 17 13/16 x 10 11/16 in. (45.2 x 27.2 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1941
Accession Number
41.25.5
Tags
About this artwork
This witty satirical print, published by Matthew Darly on March 1, 1777, exemplifies the Georgian era's tradition of social commentary through caricature. The hand-colored etching and engraving mercilessly lampoons the fashionable excesses of late eighteenth-century women's dress, particularly the practice of tight-lacing corsets to achieve the desired silhouette and the towering, elaborately dressed hairstyles that reached absurd heights during this period. Matthias Darly, active in London from...