At their breakfast table, an elegantly dressed woman watches a little girl dip a biscuit into a cup of milky coffee. As it is early morning, the girl wears paper curlers in her hair. Although the plain background beyond the cane back chairs gives little sense of the interior they are in, the figures’ clothing suggests that they are very comfortably off. Liotard has spared no details in his depictions of these fabrics, from the sheen of the woman’s black and pink striped silk dress, to the delicate pattern of her matching sleeves and apron, which even has tiny pins to fix it to her bodice.
Coffee and chocolate were exclusive, luxurious beverages in the eighteenth century, often enjoyed at breakfast by those who could afford them. The highly polished lacquer tray in front of the two figures likewise signals luxury, and Liotard has lavished attention on the still-life elements piled on top of it. Very unusually, he has used a build-up of thick, wet pastel to create dimensional reflections on the silver coffee pot and Chinese porcelain. Pastel is an extremely fragile medium, sensitive to both light and movement, yet miraculously these impasto highlights remain intact and there are no signs of fading on the delicate blue designs of the porcelain.
Although Liotard worked in oil, chalk, enamel and even painted on glass, he is best known for his use of pastel. This soft, friable material – composed of chalk, pigment and a gum binder – was perfectly suited to portraiture, producing rapid, luminous likenesses. Liotard’s pastels were both highly sought after and highly priced: in London in the early 1750s, a pastel head by Liotard commanded a higher fee than a full-length portrait in oil by the young Joshua Reynolds. Due to its size, ambition and the quality of its execution, The Lavergne Family Breakfast has long been viewed as Liotard’s masterpiece.
On the sheet music that pokes out from the open drawer, we can just make out a minute signature and date: Liotard / a lion / 1754 (‘Liotard / in Lyon / 1754’). Although this picture is not strictly a portrait, its sitters have long been associated with the Lavergne family, relatives of Liotard’s who lived in Lyon. He himself described the figures as mother and daughter, but the sitters were probably his niece and one of her own nieces. We know that Liotard visited his family in Lyon in the summer of 1754, and that he brought this pastel back with him to London. It was here that he sold it for 200 guineas – an extremely high sum – to Viscount Duncannon, later 2nd Earl of Bessborough (1704–1793), his most important patron.
In 1773, Liotard returned to London and made a precise replica of this extraordinary pastel in oil (today in a private collection). The pastel has remained in Britain since 1754, and had not been exhibited or seen by the public prior to its arrival at the National Gallery.
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