Trivial Hirsute
by Judy Greenhill
Past Trivial Columns
When the great majority of men in
the Ancient World were beginning to adopt the clean-shaven look – around the
time that Alexander the Great was decimating the Persian Empire in 331 B.C. –
painters and sculptors were prominent among the few who refused to part with
their whiskers. For artists, even to this day, a beard is the badge of a
freethinking, somewhat non-conformist individual who is pleased to stand out in
a crowd. And in the words of beard connoisseur Edwin Valentine, “Artists,
perhaps more than any other class of persons, have been responsible for keeping
alive the tradition of the beard, as they have worn it in season and out.”
In a survey of history’s greatest painters there is facial hair aplenty. During
the latter part of the 15th century, when smooth chins were the ‘in’ thing,
Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo sported long beards. In the following
century, Titian and El Greco had sizeable beards, and Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s
dark whiskers were of formidable length. In contrast, the beard of Albrecht
Dürer, as shown in his self-portrait of 1500, was yellowish and rather wimpy
looking.
Late in the 16th century, Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens, left us with a
portrait of himself that admirably shows off his pointed, carefully trimmed
“Vandyke” – a beard style named after the famous artist Anthony Vandyke.
Vandyke, also of Flemish birth, was a student of Rubens who went on to become
the most fashionable portrait painter of the 17th century.
In England to assist Rubens paint the ceiling of the Banqueting House in
Whitehall, the 30-year-old Vandyke came under the eye of Charles I, who
appointed him court painter. After painting the king’s portrait numerous times,
from every angle, and after receiving a knighthood, Sir Anthony was inundated
with commissions. Everyone of the aristocracy wanted a Vandyke portrait of
themselves dressed in rich imported silks and exquisite lace, with not a hair
out of place in the ladies’ elaborate coiffures or the men’s immaculate, modish
beards. So exactly the same were all the beards, and so often did they appear in
van Dyke’s paintings, they acquired the name of Vandyke – a noun that is still
in use to this day.
The Dutch painter, Rembrandt van Rijn, who flourished around the same time as
Rubens and Vandyke, left us not one but scores of paintings of himself, each
with a change of costume and beard in representation of a different historical
figure.
The late 17th century, and the early part of the following century up to the
time Victoria became Queen of England in 1837, was generally not a good period
to be making a show of facial hair, and only artists and men of similar
temperament had the temerity to venture into public with a beard. Such a man was
James Ward (1796-1859), an artist celebrated for his animal paintings in his
lifetime but little known today.
At a time when everyone shaved Ward wrote a spirited pamphlet titled Defense
of the Beard, in which he insisted that religion and good taste obligated
every hirsute man to grow one – and offered 31 justifications, mostly grounded
on Scripture, for adorning of one’s self in this manner. “Who would countenance
a shaved Christ?” inquired Ward. “A beard is a thing pleasing to both God and
the wearer,” he asserted.
We have the assurance of Ward’s granddaughter, Henrietta Ward, that granddaddy
practiced what he preached. In her book Memories of Ninety Years (1924)
she describes the artist (90 years old when he died) as being “well below
average height, wearing a truly magnificent beard large enough to furnish a
galaxy of Minor Prophets with beards of respectable dimensions.”
Another artist of the same period, also an animal painter of fleeting fame, was
Samuel Palmer (1805-1881). He was 24 years old and just getting established in
1829 when he wrote in a letter to his future father-in-law, John Linnell, “The
artists have at last an opportunity to wear the beard unmolested. I understand
from the [news]papers that it is become a height of fashion.” Palmer did
eventually enjoy the privilege of wearing a beard, but that was not before Queen
Victoria married the bearded Prince Albert in 1840, and facial fuzz had become
universally acceptable.
Past Trivial Columns
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