This is Fragonard’s ‘The Joy’s of Motherhood.” Yeah, I don’t think he spent a lot of time around women with young children. Of course, looking at the painting, it doesn’t really look like he spent a lot of time outside either. Those are some impressively fantastical and chinoiseried trees!
My Dr Sketchy talk is themed around how artists were inspired by undergarments. I’m starting with the 18th century and rococo undergarments. Of course, 18th century undergarments aren’t technically undergarments, since chemises, stays and petticoats could all be worn as outerwear! So the artworks that I am being inspired by to stage my tableaux for the talk includes both intimate boudoir scenes with real underwear and genre scenes with romanticised peasant women in stays and petticoats. First intimate boudoir scenes, as epitomised by Boucher’s La Toilette: Ooh! Stockings! And frilly petticoats! And bed jackets, and maybe a hint of stays. And sexy slippers! On a much naughtier note, we have Pater’s “Mme. de Bouvillon Tempts Fate by Asking Ragotin to Search for a Flea” (which has got to be the best name for a painting ever, and must be a reference to something) Mme. de Bouvillon appears to have opened her robe to reveal her jumps, which are barely containing her bounty. Oh dear! The genre scenes are a little sweeter and less saucy: Boucher’s …
