2-703-440 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

'The Gallery of HMS Calcutta (Portsmouth)', c1876, (1948). A young naval officer flirts with a woman who hides her smile behind a fan. Between them stands a chaperone. Both women are wearing the bustle, a Victorian padded undergarment which accentuated the waist. The scene is the deck of a ship in the dockyard at Portsmouth on the Hampshire coast. Painting in the Tate Gallery, London. From "English Fashion", by Alison Settle. [Collins, London, 1948]