"A painterly performance of politeness: Jean-Étienne Liotard’s ""Still Life: Tea Set"" and identity in eighteenth-century England"
Kalaher, Emily Danielle
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/89085
Description
Title
"A painterly performance of politeness: Jean-Étienne Liotard’s ""Still Life: Tea Set"" and identity in eighteenth-century England"
Author(s)
Kalaher, Emily Danielle
Issue Date
2015-12-10
Department of Study
Art & Design
Discipline
Art History
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
M.A.
Degree Level
Thesis
Keyword(s)
Jean-Etienne Liotard
still life
tea set
identity
self-fashioning
eighteenth-century
England
Liotard
surface
ancien regime of identity
polite
politeness
polish
agency
consumerism
middling sort
middle class
Georgian
le peintre turc
tea
porcelain
blur
sugar
Abstract
This thesis explores how Jean-Etienne Liotard’s 1783 painting, Still Life: Tea Set, functioned within its eighteenth-century context. Rather than considering the image as an academic exercise, depiction of the chinoiserie craze, or as evidence of the aging artist’s waning virtuosity, as other scholars have done, I argue that Still Life: Tea Set functioned as an active agent within its specific social matrix. Utilizing eighteenth-century sources as well as the work of contemporary scholars, this study closely examines the still life in relation to the phenomena of politeness and superficial self-fashioning, or the ancien régime of identity—a concept put forth by Dror Wahrman. When considered within the historically situated themes of eighteenth-century consumerism, the emergence of the Georgian middle-class, and polite society, it becomes clear that Still Life: Tea Set was an image created for consumption within a very specific cultural matrix, within which it was able to actively generate a range of flexible meanings for viewers.
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