French Woman and Children – Autumn 1859

In a classical outdoor setting of white marble walls and greenery, a mother and her two children model their French fashions for the Journal des Jeunes Personnes. The year is 1859, the ascendancy of the regime of Napoléon III (Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte), and the economic optimism of the upper classes is reflected here in the family’s clothing.

The mother at the left wears a silver-gray dress over a white blouse with a very full skirt. Both the v-necked bodice and the skirt have many tiers of horizontal ruffles each with a very narrow black stripe. Draped over her arms is a black lace shawl, and she wears yellow gloves with red edges, or perhaps they are red bracelets.

Her white lace cap is trimmed with white lace ruffles and pink flowers, with a wide green ribbon tied in a bow. Her oldest daughter on the right wears a white blouse of softly pleated light weight fabric with wide three-quarter bell sleeves. Two bands of gathers create ruched upper sections of the dropped shouldered sleeves, which fall open from the elbow.

A narrow band of ruching edges the sleeves and the round neckline. Her pink patterned skirt has a pattern of darker pink, and may be a border print. She wears a shallow-brimmed straw hat trimmed with pink roses, ribbons and black ostrich feathers. She wears black net fingerless mitts. The girl leans forward to hand her little sister a branch with berries on it as a toy.

The youngest child, probably no more than four years old, sits on a soft velvet cushion as she takes the berries offered by her sister. The child wears a loose-fitting dress of white eyelet; around the waist is a wide powder blue ribbon.

She wears a white lace cap with a matching blue ribbon and blue shoes. The red beaded necklace she wears matches the shape and color of the berries which have caught her attention.

Credit: The Claremont Colleges