Beautifully-framed 18th century French fashion plate #4

This lady is dressed in something that resembles a Christmas cracker and was apparently the height of fashion in 1780’s France - a good example of the ridiculous excess that all those revolutionary peasants kept banging on about! The caption tells us that this is a Polish-style robe - which seems to mean a robe with the sides of the outer layer pulled back to reveal a different contrasting layer below, topped with a coqueluchon, which was a sort of hat, in this case one which looks like a multicoloured meringue.

She has been most beautifully framed with a proper mounting board, in a wooden gilt frame. I have a series of these pictures, all framed seemingly by the same framer, and one of the smaller pictures has the label on it which tells us that this was framed by the artist’s supply shop Dupré in rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, Paris. The fact that the label says only Dupré and not Dupré et Cie (Dupré and Company) seems to indicate a date of framing between 1888 and 1919, which corresponds to my own thoughts that this was framed around 1910. The frame of this print is perfect. At the back there is a little eye-screw to hang this to a picture-hook. At some point it looks as though the original glass in this may have cracked, letting in possibly the fumes from a gaslit room or a coal fire, which have discoloured the mounting board a little in some strange lines. At least this is my guess. The glass currently in the frame is not broken.

The framed image measures 33x40.5; the image itself is 20.1x27cm.

Please click on the photos to open them up full-sized.

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