Aesthetic Satires Gallery4-Aesthetic Inconsistency

Aesthetic Inconsistency

George du Maurier
“Aesthetic Inconsistency”
Punch 78 (May 1, 1880), page 198 

This satirical drawing hits a number of targets. The setting is the home of the Cimabue Browns, du Maurier’s caricature of the circle of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ford Madox Brown, and William Morris. The ladies of the family have long dark hair, perhaps modeled on Jane Morris, and their home is decorated with fashionable Japanese ceramics and textiles. Under fire are the Cimabue Browns’ pretensions — “as a rule [they] will hear nothing but the severest classical music” — but also their snobbery, since the high social status of the singer, Lord Plantagenet Cadbury, means that his performance of a music-hall song, “Ain’t I the Cheese,” is listened to “in sculpturesque attitudes expressive of rapt attention.” 

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