The application of makeup and final stages of dress as a public performance for friends and associates was a common feature of elite sociability in eighteenth-century Europe. In this portrait, exhibited at the Salon of 1750, Madame Marsollier initiates her daughter into this ritual through which beauty, etiquette, and consumer power (note the luxurious fabrics and toilette set) were put on display. Madame Marsollier had married a wealthy textile merchant whom she considered beneath her station. By employing the French royal family’s favorite portraitist, the Marsolliers aspired to aristocracy and, indeed, their daughter became the marquise de Chamilly.
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