In the mid-nineteenth century, dress was an important indicator of social class and moral stature. Novels incorporate careful descriptions of the clothing of main and even minor characters, distinguishing the flashy from the modest, and the respectable from the dissolute. Painters, too, took dress very seriously. In the first half of the century, a new emphasis on authenticity, and a vogue for subjects from British history, called for the minute delineation of costume details. William Powell Frith, in his Autobiography, wrote of the difficulty involved in painting historical costume and the research it necessitated, involving many visits to the Print Room of the British Museum. Even when their subject matter came from literature or history, artists would paint from real costumes if they could, rather than using illustrations.
The shift from historical to modern dress subjects meant that clothes were easily available and could be both new and authentic. Models wore their own clothes, or clothes could be borrowed or bought and used to dress lay figures or professional models. Frith famously commented that modern dress was 'unpicturesque,' but modern dress also had major attractions for the artists: the 1850s and early 1860s was a period when women's dress, especially, was spectacular and showy, and new fashions were incorporating technological advances. The period from 1856 to 1860 has been pinpointed by the social historian Christopher Breward as the time of greatest change, when two inventions which can be directly linked to the Industrial Revolution--the steel crinoline and aniline dyes--gave women a large, brightly-coloured presence on the streets and other public places. By the mid-1850s there was also a flourishing school of genre painting which deliberately exploited the fascination with the spectacles of modern life--the crowd in all its variety, whether at sporting events or in the street. Such paintings laid out a panorama of society with its various gradations, strengthening the illusion that the different classes co-existed in harmony with one another. The pseudo-science of physiognomy--the interpretation of outward appearance, especially the features of the face, to discover a person's predominant temper and character--was harnessed by artists to distinguish rich from poor, well-bred from nouveau riche, virtuous from potential criminal. Dress, however, was even more important in enabling viewers to recognise the social types. Both the paintings themselves, and the artists' writings, show that they devoted careful attention to dress, acquiring particular items of clothing to paint from, often in circumstances which now seem rather surprising.
The contrasting uses made of dress in this period can be seen in three major paintings of the Victorian social scene: William Powell Frith's Derby Day (1856-8), Ford Madox Brown's Work (1852-65), and William Maw Egley's Omnibus Life in London (1859).
Frith used dress, as he used physiognomy, to indicate the social and moral standing of his figures, producing a vision of a stratified, but harmonious society. Brown, a self-declared socialist, dropped hints about his characters' attitudes to dress to challenge some of the stereotypes, and constructed his painting in such a way that it reversed the usual priorities, partially concealing the dress of the rich but giving detailed attention to the dress of the poor. Egley, consciously or not, used dress as a vehicle for fetishistic and voyeuristic desires, combined with a consumerist interest in newness and fine materials.
These three painters devoted lavish attention to these details in their works, and we must suppose that contemporary viewers studied them with a similar attentiveness, the medium giving them a freedom to stare and scrutinise that was not always readily available in real life.
All three artists left valuable written records of their practices and intentions, in the form of diaries, an autobiography, and an exhibition catalogue, which can be drawn on to supplement the evidence of the paintings themselves.
