The Macaroni. A real Character at the Late Masquerade

In the 1770s, the English term macaroni was used to describe young Francophile men who, after returning from their Grand Tour of Europe, behaved in a decidedly continental manner. The English bourgeois middle class was suspicious of this courtly affectation, a judgment reflected in numerous, often personalized caricatures. Dawe has not dispensed with any of Macaronis' characteristic features in his depiction, and has greatly exaggerated the most obvious - the high, pointed Cadogan wig, decorated with curling coils at the sides and a huge loop of hair at the back, and powdered white. The wig is topped by a tiny tricorn hat, the nivernois. The exalted gestures and facial expressions, the heavily patterned, extremely colourful and richly decorated clothes à la française, the huge bouquet of flowers pinned to the lapel and the oversized beauty patches turn the sitter into a figure of fun. This denounces the expressions of the Ancien Regime as artificially hollow and soft. This sheet shows, according to the newspaper note, \"Lord P.\" about to leave the boudoir of the Pantheon - a club popular among his peers - to go to the masked ball.