Queen's Gallery: In Fine Style

Right now at the Queen's Gallery there is an exhibition on Tudor and Elizabethan Dress. 

Not only was there an incredible range of paintings (chronologically hung to show how styles of dress changed over time) but there were actual pieces from between 1500 and 1700 in cases interspersed with the art - shoes, corsets, gloves, bags, and even jewelry! Pretty cool stuff. 

Each room had a hand-drawn chart accompanying the group of paintings...

1540s dress can be characterized by a square neckline and billowing sleeves for women, as seen in the portrait of Elizabeth I as a princess below.

By the 1630s, sleeves are much larger and puffier.

There were multiple charts next to paintings and I really got a good sense of how the styles progressed - this can be really helpful to know when dating paintings (especially if there is no signature and it is an unknown artist/sitter).

Other highlights (for me at least!) included the actual "order of the garter" worn in the 1661 portrait of King Charles II

(here is a close up of the painting from online)

and some amazing purses - this one is the shape of a frog! From the 17th century...often these small purses would have been filled with scented flowers or perfumes to scent clothing while in storage. Small purses also could have been filled with gold coins and given as a present at New Year or during royal visits.

Other highlight paintings were this one of Henry VIII

This one with Queen Elizabeth I in The Judgement of Paris (classical mythological scene where Paris has to choose the most beautiful goddess between Juno, Minerva, and Venus by presenting them with a golden apple) - Elizabeth's dress is c. 1590 and she, because she is holding the apple, is being shown as more beautiful than the three goddesses. This painting usually lives at Hampton Court (we saw it at the beginning of this year) but came to London for the exhibition.

Loved how they dressed little boys back in the day - what a nice dress, Prince Henry

I always like to see a nice Van Dyck, and this is a particularly good one by him, c.1635 (just before the English Civil War - the little boy is the future King Charles II)

Last but not least, I thought these two children were rather charming

I leave you with this.