A Lady in a Garden having Coffee with Children
- Artist: Nicolas Lancret
- Date: probably 1742
- Medium: oil on canvas
- Museum: The National Gallery
- Collection record: The National Gallery website
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About this artwork
This is "A Lady in a Garden having Coffee with Children" painted by Nicolas Lancret. The mother offers a spoon from her cup to her little daughter, while the father sits beside them holding the tray as their servant pours coffee from the pot into his cup.
You might have noticed that this painting used to be known as 'La Tasse de Chocolat', but it's actually about serving coffee, not chocolate. The sugar lumps and sugar pot on the tray suggest that these are cups of coffee rather than hot chocolate.
The way the family is arranged in the painting suggests a scene from everyday life rather than a formal portrait. None of the figures shows any awareness of the viewer, which was unusual for portraits at this time.
The light in the painting suggests it's a morning scene, and people who drank coffee for pleasure would have had it served on special trays like this one. The porcelain cups and saucers are characteristic of early eighteenth-century Saint-Cloud soft-paste porcelain.
It's possible that this painting was intended as part of a decorative scheme or series of paintings depicting the five senses. The poses and composition of the figures here are similar to those in other works from around the same time, but it's not clear if Lancret was consciously borrowing from another artist.
Overall, this is one of Nicolas Lancret's most accomplished paintings, with a strong sense of balance and harmony between the triangle formed by the family group and the circular fountain.
See it in person
A Lady in a Garden having Coffee with Children hangs in The National Gallery on Trafalgar Square, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
