Lectures

‘Only a lock of hair’: Love, mourning and memory with Dr Angela Hesson

Thursday 30 Jan 2025, 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM

In 1857, John Everett Millais depicted a young woman engaged in the act of snipping a lock of her hair, her expression one of intense contemplation. The painting contains few clues as to its sitter’s identity, yet the subject, and the varieties of feeling that it suggested, were immediately legible to its audience. While the image might be characterised as typically Victorian, the ritual depicted originated far earlier, and became, from the late seventeenth century, increasingly codified and complex.

Delicately slipping between emotional and corporeal realms, love tokens and mourning jewels have always maintained a profound relationship to the body, often worn against it, sometimes fashioned from it. Hair jewellery, whether worn as a reminder of an absent loved one, or in memory of a deceased one, provided a literal sense of physical proximity to the object of affection. Likewise, lockets, miniatures, and diverse other emotive, tactile objects, served as foci for private and public displays of feeling. These artefacts acted as mediators of emotion; distinct from dowries or contractual gifts, they symbolised intimacy, longing, and, in their inherent corporeality, desire.

This lecture will examine the evolution of mourning jewels and love tokens from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, and the ways in which their production, distribution and use could signify and regulate emotion. It will also consider the afterlives of these objects, and the extent to which later practices of collection and display might engender new meaning and resonance.

Dr Angela Hesson is a writer and curator who has published widely on the art, literature and material culture of the Early Modern period to the present day, with a specialisation in the fin de siècle. She has worked as curator of Australian art at the National Gallery of Victoria, curatorial research fellow with the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, and lecturer in art history and literature at the University of Melbourne and La Trobe University. She writes about aesthetics, emotions, sexualities, nature and magic.

Your ticket includes tea or Market Lane coffee served before the presentation, and time to browse our exclusive range of books, gifts, and homewares at TJC Emporium.

This event is presented on-site at The Johnston Collection. Please see your ticket for details. NOTE: Tickets for this event do not include access to our exhibition-house, Fairhall. Guided tours of the current exhibition can be booked separately.

This program is generously supported by The Sir Wilfred and C H (Roger) Brookes Charitable Trust.