Vanity Fair is an English novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, which follows the lives of Becky Sharp and Emmy Sedley amid their friends and families during and after the Napoleonic Wars. It was first published as a 19-volume monthly serial from 1847 to 1848, carrying the subtitle Pen and Pencil Sketches of English Society, reflecting both its satirisation of early 19th-century British society and the many illustrations drawn by Thackeray to accompany the text. It was published as a single volume in 1848 with the subtitle A Novel without a Hero, reflecting Thackeray's interest in deconstructing his era's conventions regarding literary heroism. It is sometimes considered the "principal founder" of the Victorian domestic novel.
Vanity is the excessive belief in one's own abilities or attractiveness to others. Prior to the 14th century it did not have such narcissistic undertones, and merely meant futility. The related term vainglory is now often seen as an archaic synonym for vanity, but originally meant boasting in vain, i.e. unjustified boasting; although glory is now seen as having a predominantly positive meaning, the Latin term from which it derives, gloria, roughly means boasting, and was often used as a negative criticism.
Katherine Ann Moss is an English model and businesswoman. Born in Croydon, Greater London, she was discovered in 1988 at age 14 by Sarah Doukas, founder of Storm Model Management, at JFK Airport in New York City.
Vanity Fair is a magazine of popular culture, fashion, and current affairs published by Condé Nast in the United States.
Vanity Fair is a 2004 historical drama film directed by Mira Nair and adapted from William Makepeace Thackeray's novel of the same name. The novel has been the subject of numerous television and film adaptations. Nair's version made notable changes in the development of main character Becky Sharp, played by Reese Witherspoon.
The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne is an oil painting by Leonardo da Vinci depicting St Anne, her daughter the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus. Christ is shown grappling with a sacrificial lamb symbolizing his Passion as the Virgin tries to restrain him. The painting was commissioned as the high altarpiece for the Church of Santissima Annunziata in Florence and its theme had long preoccupied Leonardo.
Laura Bailey is an English model and writer. Born in London, England, she has modelled campaigns for Guess jeans, L'Oreal, Jaguar, Jaeger, Marks and Spencer, Bella Freud, Radley and Temperley London. Bailey also works as a writer and has written for Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Vanity Fair, Glamour, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times. She is a Cultural Ambassador for the British Fashion Council and an Ambassador for Oxfam. In September 2011, Bailey was announced as a contributing editor to British Vogue. She also writes a blog for Vogue.co.uk.
Sir Leslie Matthew Ward was a British portrait artist and caricaturist who over four decades painted 1,325 portraits which were regularly published by Vanity Fair, under the pseudonyms "Spy" and "Drawl". The portraits were produced as watercolours and turned into chromolithographs for publication in the magazine. These were then usually reproduced on better paper and sold as prints. Such was his influence in the genre that all Vanity Fair caricatures are sometimes referred to as "Spy cartoons" regardless of who the artist actually was.
Feminists have long struggled with Sigmund Freud's classical model of gender and identity development and reality, which centers around the Oedipus complex. Freud's model, which became integral to orthodox psychoanalysis, suggests that because women lack the visible genitals of the male, they feel they are "missing" the most central characteristic necessary for gaining narcissistic value—therefore developing feelings of gender inequality and penis envy. In his late theory on the feminine, Freud recognized the early and long lasting libidinal attachment of the daughter to the mother during the pre-oedipal stages. Feminist psychoanalysts have confronted these ideas and reached different conclusions. Some generally agree with Freud's major outlines, modifying it through observations of the pre-Oedipal phase. Others reformulate Freud's theories more completely.
More Demi Moore or the August 1991 Vanity Fair cover was a controversial handbra nude photograph of the then seven-months pregnant Demi Moore taken by Annie Leibovitz for the August 1991 cover of Vanity Fair to accompany a cover story about Moore.
Demi's Birthday Suit, or The Suit, was a trompe-l'œil body painting by Joanne Gair photographed by Annie Leibovitz that was featured on the cover of the Vanity Fair August 1992 issue to commemorate and exploit the success of Leibovitz's More Demi Moore cover photo of Demi Moore one year earlier. As an example of modern body painting artwork, it raised the profile of Gair in pop culture as an artist in that genre.
Benefits Supervisor Sleeping is a 1995 oil on canvas painting by Lucian Freud depicting an obese, naked woman lying on a couch. It is a portrait of Sue Tilley, a Job Centre supervisor, then weighing about 127 kilograms (280 lb). Tilley is the author of a biography of the Australian performer Leigh Bowery titled Leigh Bowery, The Life and Times of an Icon. Tilley was introduced to Freud by Bowery, who was already modelling for him. Freud painted a number of large portraits of her around the period 1994–96, and came to call her "Big Sue". He said of her body "It's flesh without muscle and it has developed a different kind of texture through bearing such a weight-bearing thing".
Anna-Lou "Annie" Leibovitz is an American portrait photographer. She is best known for her engaging portraits—particularly of celebrities—which often feature subjects in intimate settings and poses. She photographed John Lennon on the day he was murdered, and her work has been used on numerous album covers and magazines. She became the first woman to hold an exhibition at Washington's National Portrait Gallery in 1991.
Elena Mirolioubova is a French artist.
Jemima Kirke is an English-American artist and actress. She played Jessa Johansson on the television series Girls. She made her feature-length debut in the independent film Tiny Furniture, as a favour for her childhood friend Lena Dunham, although her actual film debut was in the indie short film Smile for the Camera. In 2017, she starred in Zayn's music video for the single "Dusk Till Dawn" featuring Sia.
Portrait of Kitty is a painting by Lucian Freud of Kitty Garman, his wife and the eldest daughter of the sculptor Jacob Epstein and Kathleen Garman. Completed between 1948 and 1949, this oil on board measures 35 by 24 centimetres.
Jacquetta Jean Frederica Eliot, Countess of St. Germans is the third daughter of Miles Wedderburn Lampson, 1st Baron Killearn. She is his first daughter by his second marriage, to Jacqueline Aldine Leslie, daughter of Marchese Senator Aldo Castellani.
Annie Freud is an English poet and artist. She is the eldest child of the artist Lucien Freud, and his first wife Kitty Garman.. Earlier in her career, she was a civil servant.
