In 1857, John Everett Millais depicted a young woman engaged in the act of snipping a lock of her hair, her expression one of intense contemplation. The painting contains few clues as to its sitter’s identity, yet the subject, and the varieties of feeling that it suggested, were immediately legible to its audience. While the image might be characterised as typically Victorian, the ritual depicted originated far earlier, and became, from the late seventeenth century, increasingly codified and complex.
Dr Angela Hesson is a writer and curator who has published widely on the art, literature and material culture of the Early Modern period to the present day, with a specialisation in the fin de siècle. She has worked as curator of Australian art at the National Gallery of Victoria, curatorial research fellow with the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, and lecturer in art history and literature at the University of Melbourne and La Trobe University. She writes about aesthetics, emotions, sexualities, nature and magic.
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