[MUSIC] In our unit today, we will study a social movement called the Culture of Sensibility, examining how that culture became a central part of Thomas Gainsborough's work. We will begin here in Melbourne by using this portrait to examine one of the most important cultural tropes through which masculinity was performed in the 18th century. Namely, the idea of the man of feeling. We will then journey across the Pacific to take a look in depth at superb works by Gainsborough at the Huntington that present discourses on other aspects of sensibility such as effeminacy, the role of the senses, feminine agency and concern for the poor. But before we embark on that journey, let's pause for a bit of background on the culture of sensibility and how it came to be emulated so broadly by socially inclined individuals in both the urban and rural spheres in Britain, as well as elsewhere in Europe. The culture of sensibility first came into prominence in the late 17th century as the subsistence economies of Europe began to be overtaken by a more robust, commercial economy. That allowed for the development of a more orderly society, in which a new set of social ideals were paramount. In Britain, in the late years of the century, a campaign for the reformation of manners was undertaken by the state and by the church. In 1689, for example, the new king requested the Archbishop and Bishop of London to read in churches the statutes against immoral behaviour such as blasphemy, swearing, perjury, drunkenness and profaning the Sabbath, all considered to be essentially masculine vices. In 1692, the Society for the Reformation of Manners was formed. In 1702, Queen Anne issued a proclamation for the encouragement of the female virtues of piety, the prevention and punishment of profaneness and immorality. Similar edicts were issued later in the century by George II in 1755 and George III in 1787. Subsequently, this may have encouraged the development of civic humanism, a movement that encouraged the development of public virtue, liberty, and happiness over vice, self-seeking and corruption. Civic humanism involved the principle of seeking to bring about literacy for all citizens and the ideal that it was the duty of those who were literate to teach literacy to those who were not. In addition, it was the duty of those who had taste to impart those principles to those who did not. Importantly, for our interests, the cultivation of taste in literacy also involved the ability to view works of art. And the public galleries of the Royal Academy founded by Joshua Reynolds incorporated viewing of works of art to all who wished to view them. The historian E.P. Thompson has linked the Reformation of Manners to the Protestant ethic, and to the role of the churches in inculcating sobriety, hard work, and concern for those less fortunate. This concern also extended to the proper care of animals and to the evolution of cruelty to animals, itself a movement in it's own right taken up, especially, by preachers in the low church of which Gainsborough's father was one himself. With the large changes brought about by commercial capitalism came changes to social hierarchy as more and more citizens where now able to pursue pleasure as a result of greater and broader financial stability. This involved changed manners for both men and women. The traditional values of manhood bound up with classical and warrior ideals came under pressure as the citizen soldier was replaced by the businessman, the bureaucrat and the professional. The term effeminacy came to be used as men involved in the commercial world were described as feminized. So called effeminate characteristics traditionally associated with the so called feminine vices of luxury, fortune, and credit, all associated with the decline of the virtuous Roman Republic into decadence, came into prominence. Economic men were speculative as opposed to the paternal Roman figure of the citizen patriot. The manliness of the new commercial subject, ransacking the blow was in doubt, and in contrast to the traditional British noble warrior farmer. We will consider Gainsborough's Blue Boy in the Huntington around the trope of effeminacy. The third Earl of Shaftesbury and John Locke independently talked about terms related to the new science of psycho-perception in which the nervous system was discovered and recognised at the material basis for perception. They repeatedly referred to sensation to tender senses, all of which were connected with what was called the moral senses. While the two were at odds about the details of the new sensibility, Shaftesbury warned against immoderate love and over great tenderness, declaring that excessive pity renders us incapable of giving great succour. However, he allowed a plausible enthusiasm, a reasonable ecstasy in transport in relation to architecture, paintings, and music. We will consider Gainsborough's portrait of the musician Carl Friedrich Abel, in the Huntington, in relationship to the cultivation of the senses. The virtuous mind, however, refused to depend on sense only but also cultivated reason. Barker-Benfield in his magnificent study of the culture of sensibility tells us that Shaftesbury found that the bond that unites men, the higher natural affection, was more emotional than rational. There was, though, always a danger that the new commercial prosperity made men lose their masculinity and fall into an exaggerated effeminacy. These were some of the areas that worried the 18th century British citizen. 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