Happy Mothers and Other New Ideas in Eighteenth Century French Art

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Happy Mothers and Other New Ideas in
Eighteenth-Century French Art

Carol Duncan
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• Examining family relationships
• French artists and writers of the 18th century
  were captivated by the ideal of the happy mother
  and loving father.

• ..the content of this work was far from
  commonplace
• CONTENTs the happy mother, loving father,
  adoring SIX children, worshipping grandmother and
  family dogs.
• CONTENTment the satisfied and happy family
  (ergo the hard-backbreaking work is well worth it
  for so much bliss).

to all men of feeling and sensibility keep
your family comfortablegive your wife as many
children as you canand be assured of being
happy at home. --Diderot on The Beloved Mother
Jean Baptiste Greuze, The Beloved Mother (La Mere
bienaimee), 1765. Paris De Laborde Collection
(from Gazette des Beaux-Arts, LVI, 1960).
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While Greuze stated, with The Beloved Mother, how
absolutely blissful domestic life is Chardins
propaganda in Saying Grace tones it down to how
pleasant domestic life is.
Jean Baptiste Chardin, Saying Grace (Le
Benedicite), ca. 1740. Paris, Louvre.
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• Motherhood and sexual satisfaction going hand in
  hand was a popular theme, especially in imagery.
• -this printportrays marriage as a state that
  satisfies both sexual instincts and social
  demands for stability and order.
• The baby, like Cupid above reaches for an
  enticing object but it is his father, not his
  mother, who imitates the Venus overhead.

After Moreau le jeune, The Delights of Motherhood
(Les Delices de la maternite), 1777, engraved by
Helman. Paris, Bibliotheque nationale.
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Mawage(marriage)

• A legal contract negotiated between head of
  families.
• Contract itemized in detail what each family
  would settle on the new couple.
• In the lower classes, those with title to nothing
  DID NOT MARRY LEGALLY.
• In the absence of male heirs a daughter required
  a dowry

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Households for aristocrats, wealthy peasants
and artisans

• Estates and homesteads swarmed with unwed
  relatives, apprentices, servants and retainers.
• Fathers/Husbands stood for authority, not
  companionship, as they ruled over and protected
  their households.

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