Fashions 1899

Edwin Lawson, Fashions 1899, 1974, colored pencil and graphite on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Margaret Z. Robson Collection, Gift of John E. and Douglas O. Robson, 2016.38.38
Copied Edwin Lawson, Fashions 1899, 1974, colored pencil and graphite on paper, sheet and image: 23 58 in. × 18 in. (60.0 × 45.7 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Margaret Z. Robson Collection, Gift of John E. and Douglas O. Robson, 2016.38.38

Artwork Details

Title
Fashions 1899
Artist
Date
1974
Location
Not on view
Dimensions
sheet and image: 23 58 in. × 18 in. (60.0 × 45.7 cm)
Credit Line
The Margaret Z. Robson Collection, Gift of John E. and Douglas O. Robson
Mediums Description
colored pencil and graphite on paper
Classifications
Keywords
  • Figure female — full length
  • Dress — historic — nineteenth century dress
Object Number
2016.38.38

Artwork Description

Little is known about Edwin Lawson, but his images invite questions about the stories that live within artworks after an artist is gone. Lawson’s widow found a cache of artworks showing a masculine-looking figure presented in glamorous feminine attire, hairstyles, and makeup. Despite the difference between her husband’s everyday appearance and that shown in the drawings, she understood them to be self-portraits. Lawson’s self-reimaginings present a moment in which empathy becomes an imaginative act, a foray into the soul-searching of a person whose physical body and interior identity remained at odds in a society that stigmatized and punished alternative gender identities.
(We Are Made of Stories: Self-Taught Artists in the Robson Family Collection, 2022)