Description:
young couple with child; baby; visitor; woman; man; servant; nanny; nature;
Label Text:
Jean-Michel Moreau le Jeune, a student of Louise Joseph Le Lorrain, became royal printmaker at the court of Louis XVI in 1770. Here he observed and recorded in his many engravings the life of the aristocracy. While sympathetic to the French Revolution, he came to be best known for a rather nostalgic series entitled Le monument de costume that celebrated the aristocratic lifestyle that was swept away in 1789.
This engraving, titled The Joys of Motherhood, would later appear in Le monument du costume but was originally part of a series of engravings published in 1776. This section of the series showcased the upper-class fashions of the time. It followed a loose narrative of the life of an upper-class woman called Cephise, who was portrayed at the announcement of her pregnancy, as a new mother, and as a lady returning to society.
While working on this series, Moreau was also occupied with a series called Oeuvres Complètes de J. J. Rousseau. This explains why Cephise’s approach to motherhood so closely follows Rousseau’s novel concepts of marriage and child rearing. Moreau portrays an intimate, loving couple sitting in a natural setting and playfully holding up their joyful, unswaddled child. Rousseau’s theories began to gain prominence at a time when marriages were still arranged, it was considered lower class to nurse and educate your own children, and risky for them to go unswaddled. HKDV
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=SC+1964.24.7 |
