direction and height of the viewer’s eye and gaze, not always helpfully aligned, given the crowded wall
spaces and throngs of viewers, with the perspective lines in works of art (Solkin, 2001, 1–6). In such a
context, the act of looking could be quite chaotic. Viewers might provide as much eye fodder as the works
on display, with male viewers just as likely to leer at their female companions as at the women
represented in the works displayed, while the women themselves appeared anxious to “study” the
appearances of their social equals or betters. Rowlandson’s satirical prints represent such complex
“looking” as a joke for those who have experienced such events, in which notions of the “civic” and the
“polite” may appear precarious (Kriz, 2001, 57–62). Particular types of work, such as actress portraits,
seemed to provoke a kind of “flirtatious” male viewing (Perry, 2007, 7–21).
The advances made in the Enlightenment’s quests for knowledge and a “true” standard of taste were
represented more closely in more serious treatments of the act of looking. Wright of Derby’s Three
Persons Viewing the Gladiator by Candlelight (1765) focuses both on the antique sculpture that gives the
painting its title and on the expressions and experiences of those viewing it, as a means of developing
their knowledge of antique art. In such paintings the figures become surrogates of the actual viewer.
Philippe Mercier’s (1689–1760) The Sense of Sight (c.1744–1747) (Figure 5.5) includes emblematic
references to the sense of sight, within a more private yet sociable, “polite” grouping of figures carrying a
mirror, eyepiece and magnifying glass as viewing aids.