Louis Jean François Lagrenée, 'Maternal Affection', 1775

In this exquisite small painting on copper, three women are looking after two infants in a grand neoclassical setting. Leafy trees and blue skies dominate the top third of the picture space. Purple drapery is hung from the wall, providing a backdrop to the tender scene in the foreground. In the centre, a woman breastfeeds an infant, while an attendant or companion next to her 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 semi-transparent pieces of cloth over the women’s breasts may have been added later, presumably for the sake of modesty, as the paint is different from that used for the rest of their clothing.

The painting shares similarities with a series of eight paintings by Lagrenée at Stourhead in Wiltshire. One of these, The Indulgent Mother, which is also painted on copper and of almost the same dimensions, shows three women who look very similar to those here. Similar tiles, columns and drapery are depicted in The Spartan Mother also at Stourhead, although that picture is painted on canvas and much larger. The painting at Stourhead most like our one is Contented Old Age, another small-scale painting on copper, in which an elderly man, a nursing mother and two infants crowd around a crib strikingly similar to the one in our picture.

It has been suggested that the National Gallery’s painting may be either La Candeur (Candour) or La Douceur (Sweetness), which Lagrenée exhibited at the Salon of 1775. The pictures belonged to William Petty, Earl of Shelburne until he was made 1st Marquess of Lansdowne in 1784. The owner of Stourhead, he commissioned several paintings from leading artists in Paris in 1774–5. However, our painting does not match the description of either La Candeur or La Douceur at the sale of Lansdowne’s possessions after this death. Another painting by Lagrenée appears in Lansdowne’s second posthumous sale, which is described as ‘Maternal Affection – a beautiful group’ and does seem to match the subject matter of our painting.

We do not know whether the subject was chosen by Lagrenée himself or by his patron (possibly Lansdowne). However, it 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 on both sides of the Channel during the second half of the eighteenth century. Many artists responded to these new ideas of maternity and childhood, and depictions of motherhood in both genre scenes and portraiture became more frequent. It is typical of Lagrenée that he chose to treat the subject of motherhood in neoclassical guise. This is idealised motherhood, as flawless as the women’s rosy cheeks and skin like marble. Maternal Affection is an intimate picture of an intimate scene, exquisitely painted with meticulous detail and beautiful colouring, which translates physical closeness into emotional warmth.