Friday Fop

The Regency was known as a raucous era, one at which the Victorians looked askance. This Thomas Lawrence portrait of John Lord Mountstuart of Bute is quite revealing in a way that the modern viewer will find startling. Frequent Jane Austen Today contributer, Tony Grant, hinted at the  unabashed display of his male prowess in a post he wrote for Jane Austen's World, as does Blake Gopnik in The Daily Beast:

John Lord Mountstuart of Bute

I don’t count myself a sex-obsessed Freudian, but one of the more notable features of many of Lawrence’s portraits is the cling of his male sitter’s breeches, and how revealing of all things masculine they are – as was noted even when said portraits were painted. - Buy This Man Some Underarmour