print
- Museum number
- 1868,0808.7947
- Description
-
Anatomical drawing of the penis and emaciated thighs of Charles Genevieve Louis Auguste Andree Timothee D'Eon de Beaumont (called the Chevalier D'Eon), drapery over the stomach and beneath the buttocks. Facsimiles of the signatures of the examining doctors below
Hand-coloured stipple
- Production date
- 1810 (c.)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 250 millimetres
-
Width: 213 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- The Chevalier d'Eon died on 21 May 1810, after having lived for fifteen years in London as a woman. D'Eon's final years had been spent sharing a lodging with Mrs Cole, an elderly widow, who on laying out her companion's body - to her professed shock - that he was actually a biological male. As d'Eon's sex had been the subject of great public interest in the early 1770s, to the point of inspiring fervent gambling (see 1886,1221.6 for a satirical print form that period), Mrs Cole decided that medical corroboration of her discovery was necessary. She called in a committee of experts, including an anatomist, two surgeons, a lawyer and a journalist, who examined the body and dissected it to establish whether there could be any genuine question of the Chevalier's biological masculinity.
Before the dissection took place, the artist Charles Turner was summoned to make the drawing on which this print was based, in order to record the proof of d'Eon's sex. It is not clear how many impressions of the plate were printed, nor whether this was intended simply for a specialist audience or for more general sale. For a print based on the Chevalier's death mask, taken by Turner at the same date, see 1886,1221.11.
SV
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1868
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1868,0808.7947
