Dressing for the Masquerade

Four woman dress for a masquerade ball. Two of them admire their fashionable and exotic costumes in mirrors, while another is clothed in male attire, complete with a tricorne hat. These women are attended by the old and the ugly. The overturned chair in the foreground is a symbol of the confused and disorderly nature of the masquerade and the transgressive possibilities of costume. Another version, also signed and dated 1790, with only small differences, and of similar dimensions, is at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham (J. Hayes, Rowlandson Watercolours and Drawings, London, 1972, no. 72). In this, the girl whose hair is being combed at the right holds an invitation to a masquerade at the Pantheon in Oxford Street, which was destroyed by fire only two years later.