Dr Emma Barker discusses an eighteenth-century painting of a lady having a cup of a drink newly fashionable at the time – tea.
A Lady Taking Tea by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin (1699-17) is considered to be one of the greatest works of this French eighteenth-century artist. Most of Chardin’s output consists of still-life paintings, though he did also paint a small number of figure paintings. His work has been greatly admired by many modern painters from Édouard Manet to Lucian Freud. In 2005, A Lady Taking Tea was voted Scotland’s second favourite painting by readers of The Herald newspaper.
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