"A painterly performance of politeness: Jean-Étienne Liotard’s ""Still Life: Tea Set"" and identity in eighteenth-century England"

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.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.A.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Art History

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2016

Author dc:creator

• Kalaher, Emily Danielle

• 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

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2015 Emily D. Kalaher

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/89085

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/89085