The discourses of “politeness” served to unify hitherto disparate elements of the public. The merging of
ranks characteristic of the new sociability was not always regarded positively, though many saw it as a
good alternative to the political and religious tensions that had prevailed throughout much of the
preceding century or, in the case of France, the ancien (preRevolutionary) regime as a whole. A review
of the 1725 Salon in the Mercure de France commented on the mix of sexes and social ranks of viewers
(Berger, 1999, 159). When, toward the end of the century, the Louvre opened as a public museum, it was
popular with all classes (Berger, 1999, 252), due in part to the growth of literacy, both verbal and visual.
As indicated in Chapter 2, a significant blurring of the hierarchy of genres occurred throughout the
century, a development analogous to less exclusive social identities. Portraits of the genteel increasingly
mitigated grand baroque or courtbased conventions by the adoption of a more naturalistic, northern
style, although more particular patrons sometimes rejected the latter. The kitkat portraits popularized by
Kneller (and made for members of the KitKat club, who discussed and commissioned art) gave visual
expression to “politeness,” their sitters in relatively informal poses, their expressions seeming to engage
with the viewer in a sociable manner (Solkin, 1993, 35–36). Fragonard’s masquerade or ‘fantasy’
portraits disguised precise social ranks and identities in a way that reflected the covert mixing of classes
at masked balls (Percival, 2012, 174–189).
`The private lives of the “middling orders” or bourgeoisie became more popular subjects in art. In 1741,
an anonymous critical review referred to the way in which the “third estate” or “bourgeois” art of
Chardin’s The Morning Toilette (La Toilette du matin, 1741) on display at the Salon had provoked
positive responses to his art and the more modest lifestyles it represented:
It is always the Bourgeoisie that he [Chardin] puts into play.... Does a woman of the Third Estate ever
pass by without believing that here is an idea of her character, who does not see her domestic
surroundings, her countenance, her frank manners, her daily occupations, her morality, the emotions of
her children, her furniture, her wardrobe...?
(cited in and translated by Crow, 1985, 100)An emboldened public challenged previous hierarchies of public and private, grand and natural, “higher”
and “lower.” However, educated taste remained important. David’s art remained attached to classical
learning and resisted facile populism, even at the height of his popularity.
A merging of private (often familybased) and public subjects became popular in Britain toward the end
of the century, inflecting an older insistence on the role of history painting to provide idealized grand
narratives with a broader public discourse of heroism. Shaftesbury had focused earlier in the century on
grand classical scenes and styles based largely on public life, roles and identities. By the end of the
century, private life acquired a more positive connotation. Even before that, with the paintings of Joseph
Wright of Derby and the history paintings of Francis Hayman in the 1760s, the cult of sensibility made
popular throughout Europe encouraged preferences for art representing more intimate communities and the
private lives of “feeling” individuals, which might appeal in turn to the emotional sympathies of viewers
(see Chapter 5 and Solkin, 1993, 183–244). Wright’s genre subjects were often taken from the lives of the
“middling sort”; his style was markedly naturalistic while stimulating the imagination through the use of
“sublime” effects of light, thus forming part of a long tradition of chiaroscuro and “candlelight pictures.”
Unlike Shaftesbury, who had promoted an idealized history genre aimed at an elite group of refined,
paternalistic and philosophical viewers, Wright of Derby reached out to a broader public. Hogarth’s art
conveyed ethical messages infused by the values of a rising middle class. The interests of this class were
further reinforced in 1776 by the economic theories in Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, which made
respectable the positive mutual influence of private (commercial) and public benefits.