This is the first of Lancret’s series of paintings depicting The Four Ages of Man and represents Childhood (L‘Enfance).
Ten children, a baby, a nurse and a governess are outside in a tiled neoclassical loggia. Two of the children are being taught to read by the governess, while the others are playing boisterous games. A boy and a girl with long ribbons pull along a child seated on the baby’s walking frame. A pair of girls hold the child’s hands and join the game, while two others play with a mask. The rosy-cheeked nursemaid holds the baby and watches the antics of her young charges.
Lancret certainly knew the series The Four Ages of Man that Jean Raoux had painted for Philippe de Vendôme around 1714–15. Lancret’s Childhood is closely related to Raoux’s version – there are similarities in the architectural background, the balustrade on the right, the frieze-like arrangement of the children and the motif of the governess teaching from an open book. It was probably the first of the series to be painted by Lancret in 1733, as the two girls playing with a mask also appear in his Dance between a Pavilion and a Fountain (Charlottenburg Palace, Berlin) of 1733.
Lancret had his compositions copied by leading engravers. The Seasons, The Four Ages of Man, The Four Times of Day and The Elements were all engraved in order to make as much money as possible from them in printed as well as painted form.
The set was engraved in reverse by Nicolas de Larmessin III and announced in the July 1735 issue of the Mercure de France. The inscription on the engraving for Childhood translates as: ’Amusing foibles born of innocence / Pleasures that don‘t include research or cares, / make you envy the happiness of childhood / as you know better you feel less.’ Most of the numerous painted copies are also painted in reverse, showing that they were copied from the prints. A set of large wall tapestries (based on Larmessin’s prints) was made at the Aubusson tapestry works around 1745–50.
At the Château Borély in Marseilles there is a red chalk study of the woman teaching the girl to read and on the other side of the sheet another red chalk study of the girl on the walking frame. There is a preliminary drawing for the two children pulling the frame in the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg and the girl pulling the frame is also the subject of a separate study in the Louvre, Paris. The girl looking to her left at the centre of the composition also appears at the lower right of a sheet of studies of heads in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.
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