The Four Ages of Man: Adolescence

This is the second of Lancret’s series of paintings The Four Ages of Man and represents Adolescence (L‘Adolescence).A young lady stands in the centre of the painting in a grand circular room with tall windows. She admires herself in the mirror held up by a young page while her hair is decorated with bows and flowers. She is so absorbed in her own image that she does not notice her wealthy admirer has been distracted by a pretty young lady adjusting her stocking. He opens his hands as though appealing to her, while she turns and looks up at him with a coquettish glance. The French word for stocking, un bas, in eighteenth-century slang also meant female genitalia. Her revealing dress further emphasises the painting’s subject of sexual desire. The radiating pattern on the floor illustrates the idea that the gaze of a beautiful woman is like the rays of the sun.Lancret had his compositions copied by leading engravers. The Seasons, The Four Ages of Man, The Four Times of Day and The Elements were all engraved in order to make as much money as possible from them in printed as well as painted form.The set was engraved in reverse by Nicolas de Larmessin III and announced in the July 1735 issue of the Mercure de France. The verse inscribed on the engraving of this picture roughly translate as: ’Since her rays illuminate reason for us / she causes pleasure and homour to be acquired / One tries to compare to her, one tries to please; And our happiness depends on the looks of others.' Most of the numerous painted copies are also in reverse, showing they were copied from the prints. A set of large wall tapestries based on Larmessin’s prints was made at the Aubusson tapestry works around 1745–50.There is a chalk study that shows the three standing women in The British Museum, London. A drawing, possibly for the woman adjusting her stocking, was formerly in the Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris (stolen between 1914 and 1921, so whereabouts currently unknown) – although the catalogue description says she was facing to her left rather than right. There are also two related studies by Lancret of female faces in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Orléans.