A Common Feature of Elite Sociability in Eighteenth-century Europe: Now in The Met Gallery 630
The public performance of applying makeup and finishing dressing before friends and associates was a common feature of elite sociability in eighteenth-century Europe. In this portrait, exhibited at the Salon of 1750, Madame Marsollier initiates her daughter into the ritual through which beauty, etiquette, and consumer power (note the luxurious fabrics and gilded toilette set) were put on display. Madame Marsollier had married a wealthy textile merchant whom she considered beneath her station. By employing the French royal family’s favorite portraitist, the Marsolliers aspired to aristocracy and, indeed, their daughter became the marquise de Chamilly.Jean Marc Nattier, born in Paris, trained with his father and with Jean Jouvenet (1649–1717). As early as 1700 he won a prize for drawing at the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. Although he was received in 1718 as a history painter, Nattier specialized in portraiture, and in the same year had painted Peter the Great and his consort (State Hermitage, St. Petersburg) during their visit to Holland. Early in his career Nattier prepared many drawings, for both portraits and reproductive engravings. He developed a style that was both naturalistic and ingratiating, often presenting his sitters in allegorical guise. By 1740 he had achieved success in society and was taken up at court, where he took sittings from the younger daughters of Louis XV (1710–1774) and from the Queen, Marie Leszczynska (1703–1768), for portraits now at the Château de Versailles.
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