El almuerzo

A family gathers in a boudoir for a hot drink after waking: a little girl clutching a toy horse, a baby staring at the painter, a man pouring from a silver pot. Even the historians cannot agree whether it is coffee or chocolate.

The story behind the painting

François Boucher signed and dated this painting, known in French as Le Déjeuner, in 1739. He was thirty-six, already a fashionable painter of society women, and between 1739 and 1746 he tried genre scenes cautiously, though he is best known for pastoral and mythological works. The patron is unknown; historians imagine a rich bourgeois who wanted to decorate his town house and copy the aristocratic way of life. The painting passed to the dealer Edme-François Gersaint, was auctioned in 1749, and was bequeathed to the Louvre by Achille Malécot in 1895.

What to look for

At the centre is a small black and red lacquered table with a porcelain service whose motifs evoke Chinese porcelain, and a piece of toast or brioche on a tray. Behind it a man in green sets a silver pot with a raised spout on the mantelpiece. The mistress of the house, made up but still in her morning gown, wears a lace night cap and a fur-lined red velvet cape, offering a spoon to a little girl who clutches a wheeled toy horse, her doll beside her. Opposite, a woman seen from behind feeds the youngest, who looks straight at the painter.

Meaning and intent

Boucher seems to have used his own apartment on rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre, fashionable but not lavish. The man pouring may be a waiter, suggested by his white apron, or Boucher himself serving his family, as Louis XV liked to make coffee for his guests. The woman in modest blue may be a relative, nurse or governess. The children's presence reflects growing attention to childhood in the 18th century. Historians cannot decide from the pot whether it is coffee or chocolate. The French title means lunch, though the scene shows a morning drink.

Legacy

For the historian Daniel Roche, the picture, inspired by the Dutch tradition, shows a bourgeois art of living drawn from aristocratic models but breaking with their ostentation. Robert Muchembled sees in it an early phase of bourgeois intimacy and of a new feeling for childhood, which would grow in the 1760s and 1770s. The canvas measures about 81.5 by 65.5 cm and hangs in the Louvre. Its rococo mirror, wall clock, gilt sconces and laughing Buddha figure make it a vivid record of how a Paris family wished to live and be seen.