Looking Beyond the Wrinkled Surface: Old Age and Art in Britain, c. 1870 to 1920

Age is a master status with multiple implications for studying art/history; however, its
critical potential has yet to be realised. Whilst art historians have established the need to
consider how race, gender, sexuality, and class affect both art production and art historical research, the critical relevance of age has been largely overlooked. I argue that if the discipline’s scholarship is to continue to advance productively and equitably, then art history needs a critical age perspective.

In this thesis I examine the intersection of old age and art in Britain between circa 1870 and 1920. The topic of age/ing received considerable attention during this period, becoming both a prominent public topic and an intensely private preoccupation for the residents of Britain. Throughout my thesis I draw on the interdisciplinary fields of queer and disability studies that have attested to the importance of challenging rigid identity categories and ableist stereotypes. Ageing is a highly individualised and complex process yet it continues to be stereotyped: I want to challenge this flawed approach by highlighting and exploring the nuances present in artistic responses to advanced age. In the first section of my thesis I examine artworks that feature representations of older bodies, using close looking to consider how ways of managing aged appearances presented opportunities for creativity and celebration. Case studies include older soldiers and workhouse inhabitants in the art of Hubert von Herkomer, artistic representations of Queen Victoria’s ageing body, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s portraits of his mother and Thomas Carlyle. In the second section I engage with the careers of two artists who were becoming older towards the end of the nineteenth century – Frederic Leighton and Evelyn De Morgan – in order to test and unsettle the existing methodologies used to study ageing artists, including the problematic idea of “late style”.