Morning Coffee

In 1739 coffee was still something of a novelty in Paris, an expensive import sipped from little porcelain cups that were themselves rare enough to signal money. Boucher, far better known for his grand mythologies, turned here to a quiet domestic corner. Two women and two small children gather in a warm panelled room while a servant brings the pot, everyone caught mid-gesture, glancing at one another. The scene is almost certainly his own household, the woman probably his wife, Marie-Jeanne, and the children their own. Pictures like this one belong to a new taste for showing ordinary home life and the small world of children. On the mantel, easy to miss, sits a little Chinese figurine, a token of the era's craze for anything imported from the East.