Portret van Harriet Powell met een zangvogel 1770

This print of Harriet Powell with a songbird was made in London, 1779, by Elizabeth Judkins. We see the sitter posed in the height of fashion, with a bird perched on her finger. In the 1700s, published portraits like this one served as a form of social currency, circulating images of individuals and idealizing the status of fashionable people. The popularity of such images reflects the growing commercialization of British society, and the rise of a consumer culture in which status could be bought, sold, and copied. Printmaking was an important industry in London, centered around Fleet Street, as we see from the inscription here. These prints offer art historians valuable evidence about social life, consumerism and the growing visual culture of 18th-century Britain. By consulting archives of prints and publications, we can learn more about the cultural context in which such images circulated. The meaning of art is always contingent on its social and institutional context.