Abstract
Facial hair has traditionally been understood as a matter exclusively concerning adult men. This chapter focuses on the visual and historical construction of young masculinities through facial hair in nineteenth-century Spain, an unexplored history that reveals a fascinating variety of masculine fashion codes and socio-political meanings linked to beards and moustaches. Special attention is paid to the case of self-portraiture and artists’ portraits by young Spanish artists. It reveals that while the anxiety associated with beardlessness coexisted with the questioning of young men’s masculinity, portraits showed the artist as an adult man—meaning with developed facial hair—whereas young artists’ proud representation of fuzz constituted a challenge to this standard, linked to new cultural meanings associated with adolescence.
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Notes
- 1.
A. Jones, “Clothes Make the Man: The Male Artist as a Performative Function,” The Oxford Art Journal 18, no. 2 (1995): 19.
- 2.
As Jean-Marie Le Gall states—following Christian Bromberger ’s anthropologic study of hair—hair and facial hair are not just a visual key for differentiating the sexes, but have their own meanings about the society and culture to which they relate and express the relationship between the individual, social order and aesthetic impositions. J. M. Le Gall, Un idéal masculin? Barbes et moustaches XV e-XVIII e siècles (Paris: Payot, 2011); C. Bromberger, Trichologiques: une anthropologie des cheveux et des poils (Paris: Bayard, 2010).
- 3.
G. Greer, The Boy (London: Thames & Hudson, 2003); M. L. Fend, L’androgyne dans l’art et la théorie de l’art en France (1750–1830) (Paris: Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, 2011).
- 4.
J. Tosh, A Man’s Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian England (London: Yale University Press, 1999); A. M. Sohn, Sois un homme! La construction de la masculinité au XIX e siècle (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2009).
- 5.
E. Badinter, XY. On Masculine Identity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992); M. Burin and I. Meler, Varones. Género y subjetividad masculina (Barcelona: Paidós, 2000); I. Jablonka, “L’enfance ou le «voyage vers la virilité»,” in Histoire de la virilité. 2. Le triomphe de la virilité: le XIX e siècle, ed. A. Corbin (Paris: Seuil, 1990); G. Espigado Tocino, “Cómo hacerse un hombre. La pedagogía decimonónica al servicio de la construcción de la identidad sexual,” in La identidad masculina en los siglos XVIII y XIX. VIII Encuentro de la Ilustración al Romanticismo (1750–1850), ed. A. Ramos Santana (Cádiz: Universidad de Cádiz, 1995), 129–50.
- 6.
J. J. Rousseau, Emilio, o de la educación (Madrid: Alianza, 1990); Fend, L’androgyne dans l’art, 137.
- 7.
Sohn, Sois un homme!, 17.
- 8.
The controversy of the toilette as a threat to masculinity and national identity has here parallels with the French fashion introduced by the Bourbons in the eighteenth-century Spanish court; effeminacy , then, is also tainted with political connotations in the case of the early nineteenth-century afrancesados, and acquires new meanings in the context of the army and guerrilla fighters during the war against the Napoleonic invasion between 1808 and 1814. A. Molina, “De caballeros de pelo en pecho a señoritos de ciento en boca,” in Miradas disidentes: géneros y sexos en la historia del arte, ed. A. Dallal (México DF, UNAM-Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, 2007), 257.
- 9.
El Procurador general de la nación y del rey, 25 March 1815, 669–70.
- 10.
C. Reyero, “Guerrilleros, bandoleros y facciosos: el imaginario romántico de la lucha marginal,” in Anuario del Departamento de Historia y Teoría del Arte, 20 (2008), 9–20.
- 11.
The Pragmatic Sanction of 1830 left young princess Elisabeth, aged three at the moment of her father’s death, heir of the Spanish throne. Her mother, Regent Maria Christina of the Two Sicilies, defended her rights with the support of the Liberal Party against the pretentions of Infante Don Carlos, triggering a civil war known as the First Carlist War (1833–1840). The Constitution of 1837 recognised the power of monarchy, which for the first time in centuries rested upon a woman’s shoulders, and stated how her future husband would have no part in the rule of Spain .
- 12.
El Hablador, “Modas políticas,” El Guardia Nacional, 10 May 1837, 1. In order to make the reading easier, all extracts from Spanish periodicals have been translated. The term “whiskers ” here could seem problematic, as it could be exclusively referring to the chin beards mentioned above; the Spanish term used by the author (esos pelitos and pelos) leads us to think that he refers to facial hair in a more general, and maybe even pejorative, way.
- 13.
“Una cosillina,” Fray Gerundio, 2 December 1837, 93.
- 14.
About the relationship between beards and power in history and literature, see Le Gall (2011) and M. A. Johnston, “Playing with the Beard: Courtly and Commercial Economies in Richard Edwards’s Damon and Pitihias and John Lyly’s Midas,” ELH 72, no. 1 (2005): 79–103.
- 15.
For more information about moustaches in the army as a way to build masculine identity in nineteenth-century France see Sohn, Sois un homme!, 28–31; G. Mihaly, L’émergence du modèle militaro-viril. Répresentations masculines en France au XIX e siècle (Paris: École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 2004).
- 16.
Soldiers were obliged to wear a moustache and uniform, and any civilian wearing a moustache faced a fine of 400 ducats or six months in prison. “Orden de la plaza del 30 de julio de 1832,” Diario de avisos de Madrid, 31 July 1832, 893.
- 17.
Eco del comercio, 30 July 1834, 1–2.
- 18.
Boletín oficial de la provincia de Cáceres, 8 March 1845, 115.
- 19.
The writer behind the initials B. M. stated in El genio de la Libertad: “We are not supportive of naked faces , as we like the attributes of virility, but we would like it that in this anarchy in contemporary faces a fashion of wearing the beard should be adopted, accordingly to our dress codes … that is to say, the full beard,” B. M. “Variedades de la barba,” El genio de la libertad, 23 October 1848, 3.
- 20.
About the two-sexes model and physical appearances see T. W. Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990).
- 21.
D. D. Gilmore, Hacerse hombre: concepciones culturales de la masculinidad (Barcelona: Paidós, 1994), 111.
- 22.
Ruled by men assisted by younger men, most barber shops were considered places of masculine intimacy. We have only one record of a barber shop in Madrid which, according to the press, would have included some women in its staff. This press report, published in 1851, was riddled with sexist statements, which focused on the pleasure of having a shave by these “pretty barbers ,” or accused them of being the new Delilahs who dared shave their own husbands and fathers. “Barbería notable,” La España , 22 June 1851, 4; El Heraldo, 25 June 1851, 3; El Observador, 21 June 1851, 3; “Barberos con faldas,” La Nación, 22 June 1851, 4; “Conspiración contra los bigotes,” El Mundo Nuevo, 24 June 1851, 2–3.
- 23.
Anne-Marie Sohn chronicles similarities in the nineteenth-century French press in the same terms: Sohn, Sois un homme!, 290–91.
- 24.
Federico de Madrazo y Kuntz, The Great Captain After the Battle of Cerignola , 1835; oil on canvas (134 × 187.5 cm); Museo Nacional del Prado [P07806].
- 25.
J. L. Díez and J. Barón, El siglo XIX en el Prado, catálogo de exposición, Museo Nacional del Prado (31 October 2007–20 April 2008) (Madrid: Museo del Prado, 2007).
- 26.
Díez and Barón, El siglo XIX en el Prado.
- 27.
In his study of the group portraits of Delaroche’s and Gleyre’s students, Hauptman points out the possibility that some artists turned to this visual trick to conceal their young appearance. Hauptman, “Delaroche’s and Gleyre’s Teaching Ateliers and Their Group Portraits,” Studies in the History of Art 18 (1985): 97.
- 28.
Antonio María Esquivel , Self-portrait (c.1824); oil on canvas (62.5 × 48 cm); Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya [040910-000].
- 29.
S. Monks , “Life Study: Living with the Royal Academy, 1768–1848,” in Living with the Royal Academy: Artistic Ideals and Experiences in England, 1768–1848, ed. S. Monks , J. Barrel, and M. Hallett (England: Ashgate, 2013), 4.
- 30.
Costumbrismo, linked with Romanticism , is the pictorial interpretation—and idealisation—of Spanish customs and traditions, and especially developed between Andalusian painters in spite of the bad criticism received from history painters such as José de Madrazo : “I’ll be glad to know you have received it and specially your judgement about it. I am also glad that Carlos is sending his [painting], because of many reasons and, above all, because it is necessary to form a compact body to counteract those poorly named Murillos and troupes of Villaamiles, who will exhibit paintings by the dozen, as they are extremely blatherer and boastful,” F. Madrazo, Epistolario, vol. I (Madrid: Museo del Prado, 1994), 240.
- 31.
E. Navarrete, La Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando y la pintura en la primera mitad del siglo XIX (Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española, 1999), 298.
- 32.
F. Madrazo, The Painter Carlos Luis Ribera, 1839; oil on canvas (92 × 73 cm); Museo Nacional del Prado [P07799].
- 33.
C. Reyero, “Ideología e imagen del artista español del siglo XIX entre París y Roma,” in El arte español entre Roma y París (siglos XVIII y XIX), ed. L. Sazatornil Ruiz and F. Jiméno (Madrid: Colección de la Casa Velázquez, 2014), 132.
- 34.
Jones, “Clothes Make the Man,” 20.
- 35.
N. Aresti, Masculinidades en tela de juicio: hombres y género en el primer tercio del siglo XX (Madrid: Cátedra, 2010).
- 36.
Among these behaviours we may cite the very fact of social gatherings and political debates, but also sports like fencing and, much later, wrestling, or habits such as smoking, drinking and gambling. R. Navarrete, “Tipos españoles. El pollo ,” Semanario Pintoresco Español, 11 March 1855, 74–75.
- 37.
Tosh, A Man’s Place, 111.
- 38.
“Afeitar en desierto,” El Clamor Público , 27 August 1851, 3.
- 39.
While writing about tricogenia, the anonymous author of an interesting article in the magazine Guía del Peluquero y del Barbero cited some of the most frequent, and sometimes dangerous substances historically used as hair growth stimulators: “Bear butter, fox, mole or beaver fat; ram, lizard and ostrich blood; snake powder, … the ashes from wasps, beetles or old leather, have been privileged with the quality of regrowing hair” (“De la calvicie, causas que la producen y modo de evitarla en algunos casos,” Guía del peluquero y barbero, 1 November 1873, 2). The reputation of some of these ointments comes from unscientific parallels, as an article, taken from the London Magazine, divulged in Spain in 1827: “As bears have very long hairs, some presumed that their fat would make their hair grow … No fat or butter, whatever its origin, … would be able to thicken the hair unless it could re-establish, inside the skin, the organs where its roots grow … As for beaver oil, its use is usually recommended for other part of the human body” (“Del uso y efectos de los cosméticos,” Mercurio de España, August 1827, 126–32).
- 40.
F. García Lomas, “Lo que es un pollo en nuestros días,” La Ilustración , 19 April 1851, 127–28.
- 41.
Quoted in “Modas y barbas,” La España , 25 April 1854, 4.
- 42.
“Modas y barbas,” 4. Alice White ’s chapter in this volume shows how young British soldiers felt anxious also about their moustaches being too weak compared with their older fellows’ bushier, military moustaches .
- 43.
El Mundo Cómico , 4 January 1874, n.p.
- 44.
The political allusion used here cannot be ignored, as in the metaphor the young man is meant to incarnate the role of a soldier, a dictator or a capricious statesman whose will is imposed on a political organ to abolish its power. Referring in this case to the young man’s own body, the act of shaving as the “fall of the ministry” involves a new state of self-consciousness, but we must assume that its decree is still rooted on an immature wish or in compensatory masculinity .
- 45.
M. Matoses, “El primer bigote,” El Mundo Cómico , 5 March 1876, 2–7.
- 46.
“Doña Ana Urrutia de Urmeneta,” Seminario Pintoresco Español, 25 January 1852, 29.
- 47.
M. Fortuny, Self-portrait (c.1858); oil on canvas, 0.62 × 0.50 m; Barcelona, Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya [008173-000].
Acknowledgements
This essay is linked to the PhD research project “Representations of Masculinity and Associationism: Artists’ Portraits in Nineteenth-Century Spanish Painting,” which I am completing at the University of Valladolid with the support of the IDINTAR Research Group (Identidad e intercambios artísticos. De la Edad Media al mundo contemporáneo), and the economic support of the Spanish Government (Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports, FPU Grant ref. FPU2013/03082). I would like to thank Dr. Alun Withey and Dr. Jennifer Evans, and all the speakers at the seminar, for their contributions and advice; Margarita Alonso and Mickaël Batton, for their patient readings of this chapter from the first draft version; Raphaelle Occhietti and Lara Bourdin, whose ideas and support helped me in writing the final version.
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Cabezas, M.V.A. (2018). Beardless Young Men? Facial Hair and the Construction of Masculinity in Nineteenth-Century Spanish Self-Portraits. In: Evans, J., Withey, A. (eds) New Perspectives on the History of Facial Hair. Genders and Sexualities in History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73497-2_5
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