Having watched one too many Jane Austen adaptations, you might think Georgian women were forever doing needlework in stuffy drawing rooms. But had you been a woman some 200 years ago, you may actually have spent your time trying to paint flowers onto velvet – or even earned a living by teaching refined ladies how to do so.
In the late Georgian era, it was considered core curriculum in a young lady’s education to learn the ‘art’ of velvet painting – as vital as English, French and ‘Globes’ (geography). I discovered this after finding an intriguing object, half-hidden in a drawer in the V&A: a 1820s design for painted velvet, by H.H. Henry.
Importantly, women also capitalised on the fashion for velvet painting to earn their living by teaching the art – some even travelled up and down the UK becoming entrepreneurs with thriving businesses that taught thousands of well-heeled pupils.
I found myself wondering, what else might this object tell us about the independence and agency of some Georgian women?
Origins
Velvet painting became fashionable in the early 19th century, popularised by trend-setting royals such as Caroline of Brunswick, The Princess of Wales and wife of the future George IV. Commercially available instruction manuals explained how to do velvet painting, art supply shops sold the special liquid paints and rounded brushes needed to do it and exhibitions of velvet paintings, including large-scale landscape scenes, were organised.
Velvet paintings, often of flowers and fruit, were often used to decorate small personal objects, such as this bag on display at the V&A. But they also appeared on large-scale furniture and curtains. One manual suggested: “Hand screens, reticules, purses, watch pockets and a variety of other useful and decorative articles may be ornamented”. Women’s handcrafts or ‘fancy work’ might even have been given as gifts or sold at charity ‘fancy fairs’.
By the mid-19th century velvet painting was firmly established as a middle-class hobby, before falling out of fashion by the end of the century. A few isolated teachers persisted into the 20th century – relics of the Victorian age who taught velvet painting along with deportment and other obscure ‘parlour arts’.
Working women
Contrary to popular opinion, not all Georgian ladies spent their time fainting in drawing rooms. Some women earned a living from velvet painting. These women sold completed work and taught velvet painting in private and group classes as self-employed art teachers, governesses, and boarding school proprietors. Advertisements for teachers appeared frequently in national newspapers, showing how far the fashion had spread from London to provincial towns. Many of these ads appear to have been placed by single women.
Writing in 1805, Mrs. A. Noel, of fashionable Piccadilly in London, advertised that she and her daughter:
“…teach this new and elegant art to Ladies … so as to enable them to copy any Designs. … Specimens may be seen, and Cards of Terms had at Mrs. A. Noel, … Piccadilly.”
In 1821, the Misses M. and H. Taylor, presumably unmarried sisters, travelled from London to Edinburgh, stopping in provincial towns along the way to teach for a week at a time. Their handbill advertised:
“PAINTING ON VELVET. Taught in a new and very superior style,. … Specimens may be seen … at their Lodgings.”
Another of their adverts sheds light on the paraphernalia of velvet painting, which included velvet, priced by the yard, ‘glass’ paper and ‘piercers’ (for tracing designs), liquid paints and “prepared outlines of groups of flowers, … from 6d each and upwards.”
Some female teachers built successful businesses over time. Mrs. A. Noel acquired such a reputation that a London guide praised her teaching, “superior talents” and “apartments … decorated with … painted velvets, executed [..in a..] tasteful [manner], exclusively her own.”
The Misses Taylors’ marketing materials also imply they had a well-established teaching business:
“The Professors have been engaged many years in teaching ….in London and the principal Towns of England, [..and..] taught some thousands of pupils.…it has been universally acknowledged that their system … exceeds any [..ever..] introduced.”
Their confident tone signals both competence and professional pride. Reference to the ‘universal acknowledgment’ of their skills and repeat seasonal classes also demonstrates their established reputation, while their itemised pricing showed considerable business acumen. This list even reveals that they charged by the mile for travel to home visits.
The Misses Taylors were independent, single women, travelling the country (before the advent of the railway) with their tools and materials, securing lodgings for teaching, advertising their services, conducting lessons and making a good living.
These records of female velvet teachers provide intriguing glimpses into the lives of single working women of the period. At the time, being unmarried, they may have been perceived as socially disadvantaged and ‘necessitous’ (a pejorative term for women needing to earn their own money). But it is also possible that women like the Misses Taylor happily and successfully pursued their profession. It is a realisation that opens a window into the supposedly airless parlour of Regency womanhood.
