Phyllida
Valentine Cameron Prinsep, 1838-1904
1882
Oil on canvas
22 1/2 x 18 1/2 inches
The elegant manners and decorative sack back dresses of the eighteenth century exerted an important influence on the fashions of the aesthetic movement in the period around 1880. Prinsep began to use eighteenth century themes in the late 1860s and this should be seen in the context of aestheticism [Morgan and Nahum, 125].