This is ‘comedy of manners’, though, like Laroon’s Dinner Party also in the Royal Collection (RCIN 403539), it has sometimes been considered a group portrait. This is a levée, defined by Johnson as the ‘concourse of those who croud round a man of power in a morning.’ Here a lady is attended by 'suitors’ (professionals seeking work, distant acquaintances or relations with letters of introduction seeking favours, and so on) as well as her friends. A servant opens the curtains; in fashionable undress, the hostess sits beneath a huge portrait of her heroic husband, served by a maid and a Black boy, wearing a silver collar indicating his enslavement. This ‘deshabille’ (a word then pronounced with no hint of its French origin) was considered daringly immodest by Joseph Addison, who describes a lady in a ‘Night-Gown which was thrown upon her Shoulders’ and ‘ruffled with great Care’ as well as his confusion every time ‘she stirred a Leg or an Arm'. (Spectator, No. 45 21st April 1711)

Various types compete for the lady’s attention: two musicians to the right; a fat vicar diverted from his quest for a rich living by the attractions of the lady in silver-coloured silk; a grim-looking thug, scowling out at us to the left, with black scars on his face, presumably offering his services as a fencing-master (or worse) and suitably disgusted by the effete company he is obliged to keep. There would seem to be six guests (as opposed to suitors) and three servants (including the enslaved boy). A lapdog reclines on a cushion offering a metaphor for the pampered idleness of the human figures in the scene. The contrast of foppish affectation and manly heroism (in the portrait and the pugilist) exactly matches that found in The Plain Dealer, a Restoration comedy by William Wycherley (1640-1716) published in 1677, but still admired by Voltaire in 1734.

Laroon’s style is loosely based on that of Watteau and his followers, though he seems to have learned directly from his drawings, made available through Julienne’s prints, rather than his paintings. Laroon’s figures have a stringy, linear almost ribbon-like quality, which gives his scenes a liveliness and exaggeration of posture and expression appropriate for a satirist. The two lovers seated in the foreground show his style at its best; the insubstantial bench they sit on also shows its limitation.

Signed and dated: Mar. Laroon. F. 1740

Text adapted from The Conversation Piece: Scenes of fashionable life, London, 2009