Who are you calling saucy and coquettish?

Tag : milky taffeta


Sometimes two painters can look at the same scene and find in ittwo quite different realities. This is the case with the genrepaintings of François Boucher and Jean-SiméonChardin, two of the greatest artists of 18th-century France. Thisweek a new show opens at the Wallace Collection in London thatdocuments the development of genre painting in France, and largelythrough a handful of exquisite works by Boucher and Chardin.
It was the Dutch, in the 17th century, who pioneered, and maderespectable, the art of genre painting - depicting scenes fromeveryday life. Half a century later the French were catching up.Antoine Watteau was the forerunner, with his fêtes galantes -fantastical scenes that featured young and wispily beautifulcourtly folk dancing in improbably idealised pastoral settings.After him came Nicolas Lancret, who brought the human figuresindoors, and placed them in more believable settings. But it wasChardin and Boucher, in the 1730s, who produced genre paintingsthat would prove to be quite as important and unforgettable as anyhistorical or mythological scene. And why were these scenes of thefashionable faddishness of modern life bought with such enthusiasmby the courts of Europe? Because they were scenes of modern life asthey had never before been depicted. The past was no longer incharge of the present.
In many respects, Boucher and Chardin are as different from eachother as a wedge of Dover chalk from a slice of good, creamyCamembert. What they have in common is that they are painting thesame subject matter. The two paintings that dominate thisexhibition, Chardin's Lady Taking Tea, from 1735 and Boucher's Ladyon her Daybed (1743), show single female figures in their ownprivate spaces.
Chardin's woman looks more engagingly believable as she cups herhands around a tea cup. A sturdy brown teapot stands on the table alittle way away from her hands. She seems to be in a contemplativemood as the steam gently rises, making ghostly scribble shapes inthe air. There is a wonderful attention to tone and subtlety ofcolour here. See how the rich redness of the table in the bottomright hand corner of the painting is picked up in the woman'sclothing, and even in the rising steam. The woman, too, has a muchmore solid presence than Boucher's, as do the fabulous stripedfabrics she is wearing.
Boucher's young woman, on the other hand, although seeminglydemure, seems to be lounging there, tricked out in her fashionablebonnet and all that spreading finery, for our delectation. She mayeven, given half a chance, fly away on the wings of our salivatingfancy. Yes, she looks a bit saucy and coquettish - Boucher'spaintings teem with sexual innuendo, even though he is said to havebeen the most faithful of family men. Here we are invitedprincipally to relish her beauty as she lies sprawled for ourenjoyment, and not to see what is going on inside her mind. As withChardin, the scene shows some of the paraphernalia of tea drinking.In fact, this show is just as much about the growth of the socialhabit of taking tea as it is about genre painting.
Chardin is the more psychologically interesting painter of the two,the one prepared to more take risks with tradition. Though, likeBoucher, admitted to the French Academy, it was at a lowly level -as a painter of still life. To become a genre painter was forChardin a way of escaping this kind of typecasting. There issomething of the artisan about Chardin, a proud belief in theimportance of the solid, no-nonsense materiality of things - hisfather was a maker of finely crafted billiard tables.
Although Chardin didn't lack clients, Boucher was the morefortune-blessed of the two men. He became the favoured artist ofMadame de Pompadour, the king's mistress, and eventually firstpainter to the court of Louis XV. The consequence of this giddyelevation was that his commitment to genre painting of the kind wecan see in this exhibition was very short-lived because he wascalled away to more aristocratically exalted tasks. Chardin, on theother hand, stuck with - and was perhaps stuck with - genrepaintings. Fortunately, what he was obliged to do was by no meansat odds with his genius.
In part, genre painting pleases us because of what we find outabout the world of the painting. We love all those pampered Dutchdogs and those grinningly toothless, ne'er-do-well drunkenservants. And this exhibition is so infused with tea that, almostas if to slake our developing thirst for the substance, the curatorhas decided to include within its remit some of the paraphernaliaof 18th-century tea drinking, examples of the kinds of things thatare everywhere in the paintings we have just been looking at.
Here we have 18th-century teacups, teapots, and even a solid blockof tea - this one is handsomely monogrammed - as the Chinese wouldhave produced it. All this also reminds us to what an extent thefashionable world of polite society was engulfed by chinoiserie.
There are also fascinating books on display here that take sides inthe great tea debate. Was tea a good thing or a bad thing, is whatit boils down to. Here is the first treatise on tea for Westernconsumption, by Simon Paulli, who took a dim view of the drink. Inhis opinion, it induced effeminacy and impotence. Others thought itcapable of much worse: infertility, miscarriages and even the lossof good looks. Boucher could not have borne the last. Anotherwriter, Philippe Sylvestre Dufour, a pharmacist from Lyons, was onthe contrary much in favour of tea. For him it was a universalpanacea. Tea, he believed, could cure “all pains of the head,rheums, and soreness of the eyes, of the breast, shortness ofbreath, weakness of the stomach, griping of the guts,weariness”.
The French, as we are all aware, being stubborn, finally opted forcoffee. But why coffee? Again, answers turn up in this exhibition.Coffee, it was alleged by Charles Cotolendi in 1710, warded offtristesse...
At the exact historical moment that Chardin and Boucher werepainting genre scenes in Paris, a young Englishman was staringenviously across the Channel at the glories of French painting, andeven at the very fact that it had its own academy. Could not theEnglish do likewise? William Hogarth visted Chardin's studio andgreatly admired what he called the Frenchman's “little piecesof common life”.
When Hogarth returned to England, he did two things: he began tocreate paintings and lithographs that satirised the absurd socialhabits of the French as depicted in their genre paintings - thatcurious way in which they seemed to treasure absurdly smallteacups, for example - and he lobbied for the establishment ofBritain's own academy. Twenty years later the Royal Academy openedits doors at Somerset House.
Proof of Hogarth's savage attacks on the French are to be foundhere in Taste in High Life, an engraving in which an emaciated,bewigged aristocrat and an absurdly overdressed woman coo over atiny tea cup and saucer.
By making such works, Hogarth was also demonstrating that genrepainting of the kind that Chardin and Boucher pioneered in France -scenes of everyday life, often peopled by anonymous characters -was part of the unstoppable march of democracy.
Boucher and Chardin: Masters of Modern Manners is at the WallaceCollection, London W1 (020-7563 9500), from Thursday until Sept 7.Free admission
In my lady's chamber: four of the best domestic treaures from theWallace Collection
La Pompadour's powder box (1763)
The Wallace Collection has an unmatched selection of Sèvresporcelain, much of which belonged to Madame de Pompadour. Thispowder box is decorated with leaves, corn and flowers. The set alsoincludes a patch box, which contained the little black taffeta facepatches used to send coded messages to a lover.
Cup and socketed saucer (1766)
This set was specifically made to be used by an invalid lady whileconfined to bed. The deep saucer was meant to ensure that the cupof revolting milky medicine she would be administered wouldn'tspill over when placed on the bedspread.
Teapot (c.1753)
Louis XV was especially fond of chinoiserie and the fashion fortea-drinking came with it. Numerous teapots exist from this period,though they were rarely used to actually brew the tea, being toodelicate. A strong and cold brew in the pot was diluted in cupswith hotter water.
Madame de Pompadour's tea-set
(1758-9)
Silver teapots may have been used with this porcelain set to solvethe temperature problem. The decoration of rural children waspainted in the style of Boucher by André-Vincent Vielliard.
NANCY DURRANT