The Breakfast

In the middle of the 18th century, a fashionable morning in Europe could begin with a cup of hot chocolate, and the cup came with a glass of water beside it. That is what the maid in the white cap is bringing on her tray here, to a young woman in a silk gown who turns in her armchair to look at her. The museum notes that the seated woman's face looks like a real likeness, so the picture sits somewhere between a portrait and a scene of everyday life.

Liotard made it around 1752, in pastel on parchment. The museum compares his finish with that of Maurice Quentin de La Tour, whose pastel of Mademoiselle Ferrand hangs in this same room. La Tour lets his strokes of chalk show, quick and sketchy. Liotard blends them away into a closed, even surface, and that is why the skin, the silk, the lace and the porcelain cup all look so smooth.