#louis jea francos lagrenee

[galleryofart]

Maternal Affection

Artist: Louis Jean François Lagrenée (French, 1725-1805)

Date: 1755

Medium: Oil on Copper

Collection: The National Gallery, London

Description

In this exquisite small painting on copper, three women are looking after two infants in a grand neoclassical setting. One woman breastfeeds an infant, while another holds up a second baby for a kiss. A woman to the left is busy arranging bedding in a wooden cradle. The open loggia and warm light suggest that the scene takes place in a southern climate. To an eighteenth-century audience, the women’s clothing would have been understood as antique Roman dress.

The painting shares similarities with a series of eight paintings by Lagrenée at Stourhead in Wiltshire. It may be Lagrenée’s painting formerly at Stourhead, described as ‘Maternal Affection – a beautiful group’. The subject was of special interest for a contemporary audience as motherhood, and particularly the practice of breastfeeding one’s own children rather than sending them out to a wet nurse, was much discussed in both France and England at the time.