Speaking of purple hair…
Colonel James Hamilton, 1784
At Easter time I blogged about the origins of purple hair. Of course purple wasn’t the only colour being used in history - Henna red has the longest history of use dating back to ancient Egypt.
Anyone who has seen the film Amadeus will probably remember the use of coloured wigs, worn especially by the men. I never doubted that coloured hair existed in the 18th century but I assumed it was an extreme fashion that only macaronis would have toyed with and that the use of it in the film was overly generous. I assumed that since the film came out in 1984 that the spikey red and green Mohawks being worn by punks were more influential on that film than real historical research - but I may have been wrong!
Scene from Amadeus with Tom Hulce wearing a pink wig
Daniel Milford-Cottam, a colleague of mine who works at the Victoria & Albert Museum commented on the purple hair blog, remembering an interesting bit on the BBC Antiques Road Show a while back about an 18th century portrait of a man with pink hair. He wrote Louise Maynard at the show for further information and she kindly supplied him with a copy of the image and its identification. This portrait of Colonel James Hamilton was one of a pair of miniatures painted on ivory by famed miniaturist John Smart in 1784. Isn’t it ironic that two hundred years later, in 1984, Tom Hulce would be leaping about in coloured peruques playing Amadeus Mozart in the 1780s!