example, treating some of her female sitters in a gentler way that focused on their capacity for feeling, if
not “character,” the latter often being stereotyped as a masculine virtue. Male sitters were often
represented in more grandiloquent style, and with greater reference to public office, in order to reflect the
contemporary view of a “natural” gendered order of society (West, 2008, 144–145). However, Angelica
Kauffman was among those artists who challenged such values by blurring the boundaries of “feeling”
women and “rational” men (Rosenthal, 1992, 105; 2008, 82–83). The “grandeur” of portraits of sitters
from both sexes could also be undermined or reduced to a fussy prettiness when the rococo style was
used; for example, in Boucher’s 1756 portrait of Louis XV’s mistress, Mme de Pompadour. When applied
to portraiture this style emphasized decorative detail (frills, ruffs, ribbons) and delighted the eye through
the representation of dazzling surface textures; for example, the suggested sheen of satin or the use of
pleasing pastel shades. Strong eighteenthcentury traditions of satire, the mockheroic and the salacious
could also undermine the pretentions of grand portraiture.
Private portraiture
Growing demand for portraits in a more informal style appropriate to private or semiprivate display
was evident from the 1740s. In works such as these more relaxed, everyday poses, occupations and dress
were common. Marcia Pointon (1993, 54) has described “privacy” as an eighteenthcentury invention.
As stated earlier, the representation in portraiture of private individuals (sitters) through the use of
concrete and symbolic objects helped to construct the notion of the selfregulating subject who might
strive for and express identities beyond those dictated by more formal visual discourses. Relations of
power or social standing were defined in part through a series of opposing concepts, in this case the less
powerful “private” and the more powerful “public”. However, contemporary discourse on the social
passions, popularized through works such as The Wealth of Nations (1776) by Adam Smith (1723–1790)
and the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751) by David Hume (1711–1776), along with a
growing interest in personal biographies and autobiographies, also led to an interest in the personal or
private feelings that lay behind public social intercourse, from selflove to empathy (Retford, 2006, 8).
Conventionally, a rise in interest in the naturalistic representation of sitters involved in daily occupations
such as walking, reading and relaxing with their families, is linked to the influence on European art of
Dutch portrait and genre painting (Conisbee, 1981, 113–131). This issue has been related on occasion to
national cultural identities, the Dutch manner (and those with a close affinity to it) sometimes defined in
opposition to the “affectation” associated with a dominant Francophile culture. Duncan Macmillan has
explained the emphasis on close observation of nature in Scottish portraiture (including that of Ramsay)
by reference to the Scottish Enlightenment’s emphasis on practical reform. He interprets this, however, as
a desire to mediate, rather than deny, the influence of continental classicism, idealism or the rococo
(Macmillan, 1986, 19–30). Naturalistic portraits varied in style and approach. Some, such as those by the
pastellist Maurice Quentin de La Tour (1704–1788), or the more detailed representations of sitters by
Ramsay, implied an emphasis on the individual character of the sitter, whereas others conformed to looser
human types such as the daydreamer, the lover, the mother or father, the upstanding professional, writer,
musician and so on. Greater formality crept into the genre later in the century as the neoclassical style
came into vogue and restored the popularity of ordered classical interiors or neutral backgrounds. In such
works, however, the emphasis on more private, familiar, everyday poses and activities, “interiority,”
subjectivity and personal relationships often remains, as in David’s Monsieur et Madame Lavoisier
(1788).
Kate Retford, in The Art of Domestic Life: Family Portraiture in EighteenthCentury England (2006)
has explored in the context of family portraiture this growing emphasis on informality, a private inner life