[News/Arts] [UK] Britain's first celebrity transvestite...Rare painting acquired by National Portrait Gallery

[Stephanie Stevens]

Art Daily, USA


[6/6/2012]

Britain's first celebrity transvestite...Rare painting acquired by
National Portrait Gallery


[Photo: Chevalier d’Eon by Thomas Stewart, 1792 © National Portrait
Gallery, London.]

LONDON - The National Portrait Gallery <http://www.npg.org.uk/> has
acquired its first painted portrait of a male transvestite in women’s
clothing. Painted in 1792, it depicts Britain’s first celebrated male
cross-dresser.

Lost since 1926, this painting of the Chevalier d’Eon, an
eighteenth-century diplomat, is on show at the Gallery for the first
time today, Wed 6 June 2012. Following its discovery by the gallery
owner Philip Mould, this will be its first period of public display.

Chevalier d’Eon lived in London from 1762-1777 as a man, and from
1785-1810 as a woman and, during both periods, he enjoyed considerable
fame in international politics, high society and popular culture.

No transvestite or transsexual, until the late twentieth century has
enjoyed such public recognition, acceptance and popular affection. The
portrait is seen as an unprecedented historic document of his identity
and acceptance into British society at a time when men who were caught
wearing women’s clothing were viciously persecuted.

Long before he lived publicly as a woman, d’Eon was feted as a famous
soldier, champion fencer and diplomat who negotiated the Peace of
Paris in 1763. Having lived in England for 13 years he refused to
return to France when recalled, blackmailing the French crown with
threats to sell French government secrets to the British.

Painted at the height of his fame, it shows d’Eon wearing the full
cockade of a supporter of the French Revolution at a time when d’Eon
was trying to court the new Revolutionary government with the promise
of leading an army of women soldiers against their enemies. Such
depictions of support for the Revolution are mirrored by few other
works in the National Portrait Gallery’s collection.

This signed and dated painting by Thomas Stewart, is a copy of one
exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1791 by Jean Laurent Mosnier.
Stewart’s portrait was probably commissioned by Francis Rawdon
Hastings, 2nd Earl of Moira and 1st Marquess of Hastings, who was a
libertine and dandy with a taste for portraits of exotic subjects. It
would have been painted at the same time d’Eon was a popular celebrity
renowned for his demonstration fencing routines which he performed in
women’s attire.

Interest in d’Eon has never waned with a new biography appearing
approximately every 20 years between the 1830s and the 1950s. In 1928,
Havelock Ellis coined the term ‘Eonism’ to describe transvestism and
this remained in use until the 1960s. In the last 30 years, with the
development of the academic discipline of Queer Studies research into
d’Eon has never been more energetic. The Beaumont Society (which is
named after the Chevalier d’Eon de Beaumont) was formed in 1966 to
offer advice to the transgendered community. Today it is the largest
and longest-established group to give support of this kind.

While there are photographs in the Gallery’s Collection of Eddie
Izzard and Grayson Perry they are not shown in female attire and so,
with the exception of photographs of performers as their stage
personas such as Paul O’ Grady as Lily Savage and Barry Humphries as
Dame Edna Everage, the newly acquired painting can be seen as a first
for the Gallery of a male transvestite wearing women’s clothing.

Dr Lucy Peltz, Curator of Eighteenth Century Portraits, National
Portrait Gallery, London, says: ‘The Chevalier d’Eon was a figure of
international fame and notoriety in the eighteenth century, for his
military, diplomatic and social exploits. But it is his courage in
following his gender orientation in the face of the severest penalties
that make this portrait one of the most inspiring and fascinating
images’.


http://artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=55849