Art History / Lancret's A Cup of Chocolate 1742 / Part IV

Nicolas Lancret, The four times of day: Morning, 1739-41, oil on copper, series of four paintings dimensions variable, National Gallery (London).

Placing it all together

In light of the element of theatricality embodied in the garden and identity construction of the individuals depicted as well as their uncertain social position, it is clear that this seemingly unproblematic and charmingly decorative domestic scene is fundamentally about display, allusion and as a part of this, the fashioning of one’s own identity for its display to others. It is thus possible to see this painting as more closely aligned than previously thought to images of mothers and their daughters at their toilette in which they appear to be dressing the daughter and readying her for when she will take over her identity fashioning: of indoctrinating her into the complex schema of eighteenth society and politeness politics as such paintings as Nattier’s Madame Marsollier and her Daughter (Figure 12.) and also in addition to Largillierre’s The marquise de Castelnau and her son (Figure 13.), Drouais Family portrait (Figure 14.) and even Chardin’s The morning toilette (1741, Stockholm National Museum): the last being completed only a year before Lancret’s.[1]

At this point it is necessary to reflect on some of the issues having been raised and consider whether examining Lancret’s painting via these means aids our understanding of the work as well as asking whether this line of argument an appropriate way to examine artistic works, particularly of this period and origin.  What is meant by this is that in eighteenth century France it has been noted that ascribing artistic autonomy to artisanal objects was unthinkable as such objects were seen as the products of mechanical learnt behaviour rather than products of originality and creative genius, as Mimi Hellman notes.[2] Consequently this raises the question would have original audiences have engaged with this work as a material attempts to engagement with it, thus assuming that this is the way it should be read?  Certainly details of the objects and their production may not have been noted then or even by the passing beholder now but it is true that for the contemporaneous beholder details and meaning of the toilette that the lady has engaged in as well as herself fashioning through her interaction with objects of leisure labour would have been noted as an important aspect of the painting.

Any theory, school of thought or art object must be judged on the basis of what it attempts to do.  The aim of a material culture reading of an art object is to use the art object to open up a broader discussion of social history surrounding the object.  It is in this way extremely indebted to a social history of art perspective. From this perspective, readings such as Eaton’s and Hamann’s certainly achieve their aim.

Nicolas Lancret, The four times of day: Midday, 1739-41, oil on copper, series of four paintings dimensions variable, National gallery (London). 

It is also indeed a valuable aim. Any valuable reading of an art object is ultimately an endeavour to better understand the art objects social context, representation and reception.  This is essentially the aim of a social history of art reading.  What a material studies reading achieves consequently is taking this same aim to its logical conclusion.

Another questions that may arise at this point is whether or not this opening up of the discussion to focus down on the details of the material objects lead to a fragmentation of interpretation. This is no doubt a risk but it must be taken. After all artist works are always in some sense of the word material and do always live in the material world.  therefore for any comprehensive reading a consideration of the material aspect must be considered.

A material culture studies reading of the art object is extremely valuable as it allows us to, to use Darnton’s phrase, burrow down further into the substrata of societies.[3] It is not an unproblematic approach and questions of whether it is achieving the central task of art history – and can therefore been considered art history – will continue to be asked. But it is certainly not to be dispensed with as it allows the art historian to tap further into the task that has already been established by social historians of art and allows them to make use of other valuable perspectives from other disciplines, specifically anthropology.

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[1] Hellman names the highly wrought and complex system of self-fashioning and social interaction and convention ‘a conspiracy of pleasing’.  Hellman, Mimi, Furniture, ‘Sociability, and the work of leisure in eighteenth century France’, Eighteenth century studies, Vol.32, No.4 (summer), 1999, 415-445.

[2] Mimi Hellman, Furniture, ‘Sociability, and the work of leisure in eighteenth century France’, Eighteenth century studies, Vol.32, No.4 (summer), 1999, 418.

[3] Robert Darnton, “In search of the 18^th century: recent attempts to Create a Social History of Ideas”, Journal of Modern History 43, no. 1 (March 1971) p. 113.

Art History / Lancret's A Cup of Chocolate 1742 / Part III

Le beau fard: Vermillion rouge and powdered faces

The application and material consumption of powder, lead based white paint and especially vermillion rouge in the eighteenth century was a social practise that was intimately interwoven with a issues of class, gender in addition to the work of leisure that has been discussed earlier, in so much as the application of these products necessitated the interaction with certain articles of furniture and decoration such as tables specifically manufactured for the toilette as well as commonly the interaction with others of either the same or lower class (it was common for guests, suitors and class subordinates alike to be received, greeted and conversed with while either a lady or a gentleman was at their toilette for reasons of self-fashioning that have been discussed above; i.e. the performance of self for an audience).

When Charles-Nicolas Cochin commented in 1750 that “It is well known that rouge is nothing more than the mark of rank or wealth, because it cannot be supposed that anyone has thought to become more beautiful with this terrible crimson patch” he touched on an important aspect of eighteenth century cosmetic application.[1]  That rather than a beautifying process makeup was a symbol of aristocratic identity.  This may be understood for two reasons: both the lengthy, languid, process of its application at the toilette that pointed towards a certain capacity of leisure but also the expense of these products and the necessity of wearing them at court and in fashionable society.  This explains the commotion that was caused as court gossip suggested that in 1756 Madame de Pompadour was going to give up wearing her customary rouge thereby – because she did not wear much powder at the time, preferring to display her naturally creamy completion – dispense with un fard altogether.[2]  Aristocratic ladies and gentlemen in early and mid-eighteenth century France wielded a heavy-laden make-up brush with theatrical verve.[3]

By the mid eighteenth century, however, when The cup of chocolate was painted, the lowering cost of vermillion made rouge freely available so that it became a standard feature on the top of most ladies (including in this middle class ladies) dressing tables and began to have very different associations from an uncomplicated marker of aristocratic identity.  Cochin goes on to comment “It is surprising that such distinction has been attached to a colour so common and inexpensive that even the lowliest grisettes can make this expenditure as abundantly as a person of the highest rank”.[4]  IT is important to note here that Cochin’s disdain for vermillion may be as a result of a larger debate concerning the use of colour and style that was circulating at the time in which the flickering effect of light, or papillotage, was closely associated with the flirtatious batting of eyelashes as well as the style of rococo painting, something which, at least in his public role as an academie official Cochin was trying to move away from, prompting (alongside Marginy) a more serious mode of engagement and themes such as that of Greuze’s work.[5] Thus make-up began to be used by various classes and genders for different uses including to confound rather than confirm classes distinction. Whereas the bourgeois sensibility with maquillage was to improve upon nature, it was still for the aristocracy a status symbol leading Louis XV to declare that his daughters are allowed to adopt the habit when they come of age, implying face paint as a marker of both branching into adulthood as well as the respect that comes with that age and station in society.  However with the small addition of powder to the rouge that the bourgeois favoured the currency of make-up could be transformed from a marker of aristocratic birth to device used to confound class as Melissa Hyde notes, and it became a more general symbol of deceit, particularly feminine duplicity.[6]

What then, are the implications of this understanding and use of make-up when it is seen in the context of The cup of chocolate?  The image depicts a mother or a nuclear family serving her child hot chocolate or coffee and having adorned herself with rouge.[7]  She has adorned herself only with rouge and has powered her hair and face very delicately.  In this light her use of make-up needs to be considered not as a marker of aristocratic identity but as another element that confuses her class identity the same way the tension between the presence of the coffee (specifically middle class) and the alluding to chocolate (specifically aristocratic) does.  The women’s le beau fard contributes no additional information or conclusion of her class status that was confounded by the hot drink.[8]  

Furthermore, the presence of the rouge is also a reference, albeit an oblique one, to previous use of objects of the labour of leisure.  This re-affirms the child’s lesson is not blandly or generally about the move towards adulthood but the self-fashioning that accompanies it.   The child (importantly, a female child) literally ingests an uncertain drink – though probably chocolate which was after all only given to children in small doses at this time due to the understanding of it as an adult’s drink – via two examples of a woman’s (her mother’s) self-fashioning: the delicate gesture and knowing, physical acuity of offering the small spoon holding a mouthful of an adult beverage as well as the mother’s own display of previous self-fashioning endeavours (the rouge and powder).  

Nicolas Lancret, The four times of day: Evening, 1739-41, oil on copper, series of four paintings dimensions variable, National gallery (London).   

The garden as a material object.

The work of leisure that has been discussed above took place in specific locations that provided a backdrop.  Hellman discusses this backdrop in terms of the interior design of the house, which increasing in the eighteenth century in France had considerable time and expense dedicated to it and was considered equally important as the items that furnished it.  In his Tableau de Paris, for example, Louis- Sebastian Mercier comments that the construction of the building is only half the work and expense of building a house in the new manner.[9] Other contemporary sources asserted that never before was the house so highly sophisticated or the aesthetic design so considered.

This understanding as the house as a highly contrived theatrical backdrop in which individuals could practise self-fashioning must be further applied to the garden. References to highly wrought decoration of eighteenth century rooms as a theatrical backdrop for the social ‘performances’ of certain actors that are being inserted into the scene are numerous. Garden’s in the eighteenth century were subjected to much the same decorative verve that buildings were.  There was also a strong pastoral tradition in art (think of Boucher) that can and should be connected to that same pastoral tradition that occurred on the stage.  In Lancret’s work especially gardens often become sights for social exchange and drama that would ordinarily occur within the house proper.  Indeed in his work that material barriers between garden and house are often broken down with the focus on the pavilion.  In these images the pavilions are furnished as interiors and there is are no clear material features, such as doors in the arches ways, to serve as a physical barrier between these two spaces.  This breakdown of material barriers often leads to the further disintegration of ideological barriers between the built structure of the house and the designed and manipulated structure of the garden (see Figure 6 and Figure 10).  Ultimately, in Lancret’s work, as in the work of other painters such as Watteau whom Lancret was intimately connected with as they shared the same patron, the garden becomes an extension of the home.  Not simply even as a material structure but as another actor that has been inserted into the scene and whom functions as the site and also arbitrator of complex often difficult social interactions for which it functions as a neutral, liminal zone (liminal derived from the word threshold: particularly apt here are the garden is not only functioning as a metaphorical threshold but also a physical one between the public space outside the home and the private space of the house itself; it is a zone that must be passed through).  Consequently this notion of theatrical backdrops for individuals performance may be extended to gardens.   

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[1] Melissa Hyde, ‘The “make-up” of the Marquise: Boucher’s portrait of Pompadour at her toilette’, The art Bulletin, Vol. 82, No. 3 (September), 2000, 453-475.

[2] In her younger days, Pompadour favored a more naturalistic approach favored by the middle-class from which she was born into.  By the time that she was a lady in waiting however she was more heavy handed with her application and it was commented that she wore a layer an inch think.

[3] Melissa Hyde, ‘The “make-up” of the Marquise: Boucher’s portrait of Pompadour at her toilette’, The art Bulletin, Vol. 82, No. 3 (September), 2000, 453-475.

[4] Melissa Hyde, ‘The “make-up” of the Marquise: Boucher’s portrait of Pompadour at her toilette’, The art Bulletin, Vol. 82, No. 3 (September), 2000, 453-475.

[5] To understand the artistic project of reform that Marginy and Cochin embarked on see James A. Leith, The idea of art as propaganda in France, 1750-1789: a study in the history of ideas, Toronto, 1965.. Melissa Hyde notes the link between make-up, the rococo, and papillotage in her article ‘The “make-up” of the Marquise: Boucher’s portrait of Pompadour at her toilette’, The art Bulletin, Vol. 82, No. 3 (September), 2000, 453-475.

[6] Melissa Hyde, ‘The “make-up” of the Marquise: Boucher’s portrait of Pompadour at her toilette’, The art Bulletin, Vol. 82, No. 3 (September), 2000, 453-475.  Tassie Gwilliam notes the association of make-up with deceit in ‘Cosmetic poetics: colouring faces in the eighteenth century’, body and text in the eighteenth century, ed. Veronica Kelly and Dorothea E. Von Mucke, Standford (California), 1994

[7] While not the specific focus of this study the depiction of a nuclear family as opposed to an extended family is also of interest.  The structure of families began to transform in the eighteenth century due to the changing ties between urban and country in turn effected by changing patterns in ownership and wealth consolidation of the upper classes.  Nuclear families became more common and particularly middle class individuals thought of themselves as belonging to a nuclear rather than an extended family.  Hence the depiction of nuclear families became more common.  There is an established tradition of art historical discourse on these images and Lancret’s image here should be perhaps inserted into this discourse or at least considered in this light.  See Kevin Chua, “Painting Paralysis: filial piety in 1763”, French genre painting in the eighteenth century (studies in the history of art), New Haven and London, 2007, 72, 153.

[8] Dress and textiles does also not help in this endeavor. Her dress is the bright coloured silks favoured by both the bourgeois and the aristocracy.  Her cotton skirts prominently displayed and occupying a large area of the canvas, though the products of foreign (colonial labor) and international trade were similarly favoured by both social orders in question. Read Madeleine Dobie’s. Trading places: colonization and slavery in eighteenth-century French Culture, Ithaca and London, 2010 for a discussion on the politics and origins of cotton.  Also see Thomas Crow, Painters and public life, 1985, New Haven.for a discussion on how white muslin and cotton dishabille confuse class identity in art (he speaks specifically in reference to Greuze’s The village bride).

[9] Mimi Hellman, Furniture, ‘Sociability, and the work of leisure in eighteenth century France’, Eighteenth century studies, Vol.32, No.4 (summer), 1999,