The Portraits of George Sand
GEORGE SAND
About 1838
From a lithograph by Aubert
The author of Indiana clung for a long time to that masculine costume which enabled her to set at naught the prejudices and the reserve inseparable from the feminine personality in those days. It was in the habit of a boy that George Sand penetrated to the Grande Chartreuse, which was solemnly "purified" after her passage through the cloisters, so rigorously interdicted to womankind. Clad in the close-fitting jacket and loose trousers of 1830, a cap or a felt hat on her locks à la Jeanne d'Arc, her stick in her hand, with her air, half of student, half of rapin, George Sand frequented all the most renowned masculine gatherings of her time. It was not until her fortieth year when, becoming stout and too pronouncedly feminine of contour to attempt to disguise her sex without appearing ridiculous, she had to renounce the absolute independence assured her by the donning of masculine attire. At this period, Madame Sand paid her tribute to the taste and elegance of her day in her feminine costumes. The portraits of her executed between 1838 and 1840, of which we give two specimens, have the somewhat conscious grace, the languid oval of face, the exquisite smile, and the large deep eyes of the steel plates engraved for the Keepsakes so fashionable at the period. Her hair falls across her cheeks in large ringlets, waved and curled in the form then known as repentirs. A few flowers fastened on tine side, a cross hanging at her neck, which emerges from a drapery of tulle and lace, Madame Sand
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