In the JStor database I found a very interesting article by Chris Roulston called "The Female Couple in Art and Narrative." Roulston discusses how the relationship between Elizabeth and Dido is shown in Johann Zoffany’s Elizabeth Murray and Dido Belle; and how it is compared to other paintings with similar themes as John Constable’s Ann and Mary Constable (1816). Portraying contrasting female figures was in vogue during the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries. If in Zoffany’s painting the disparity is between skin color and nationality; in Constable’s representation, the difference is created by depicting the older sister Ann as a masculine, imposing figure by placing her with male clothes and a determined posture (forward gaze and straight back). On the other hand, Mary is in a very ethereal, organza dress with a very apathetic look (big brown eyes, with lowered lids, and staring at the ground) and she is slumping down with an arched back. Constable’s painting, according to Roulston, creates a hinted sexuality that is also present in Elizabeth Murray and Dido Belle.

                This allusion of sexual playfulness between young women was present throughout Western European culture as in Shakespeare’s plays as Twelfth Night (pub. 1623) and As You Like It (pub. 1623). Both plays experiment with youthful ladies cross-dressing who end up in happy marriages with male characters. According to Wahl, art “could depict homoerotic relations between young women without disrupting patriarchal authority…functioning almost as a rite of puberty that would “naturally” give way to heterosexual ‘maturity’ in marriage.” These representations always contain a mixture of innocence and eroticism. Therefore, this type of hinted sexuality was not only widespread, but accepted in society.

                There is a sexual undertone in portraying unmarried woman that are so different. Dido’s exoticism is predictably highlighted by representing her in a satin dress with an Indian turban and an ostrich feather while she carries tropical fruits. In contrast, her cousin is portrayed as a traditional British lady in a customary late 18^th century gown while reading a book. Dido is, therefore, less static and conventional than her cousin. This African/British young lady points to her own cheek, what Felicity Nussbaum argues is to contrast “to the white woman’s face”. Elizabeth tightly holds Dido’s arm, as if desiring to bring her closer as Dido looks at her audience with a half-smile, creating an enigmatic, dubious, and to some level, unreadable atmosphere. Even though Belle is portrayed in the background of the painting, she is the focus point.

                In British representations of young female pairs, there are two contrasting impulses: the first was to reinstate traditional ideas of domesticity and the second was to quietly subvert this concept. These paintings, as Elizabeth Murray and Dido Belle, tended to highlight the qualities that would be considered ideal in a wife, but there was also “an implicit resistance to the hierarchical model of marital portraiture.” (649) Therefore, there is a sexual undertone in Elizabeth Murray and Dido Belle as in many other portraits of young women in England in the 18^th and 19^th century.

Bibliography

Elizabeth Susan Wahl, Invisible Relationship: Representations of Female Intimacy in the Age of Enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1999), p.10

Felicity A. Nussbaum, The Limits of the Human: Fictions of Anomaly, Race, and Gender in the    Long Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2003), p. 63

Roulston, Chris. "Framing Sensibility: The Female Couple in Art and Narrative." JSTOR. Rice University, Summer 2006. Web. 18 Mar. 2015.