A Tale of Two Chapeaux: Fashion, Revolution, and David’s Portrait of the Lavoisiers

Off with her hat? Conservators at The Metropolitan Museum of Art recently discovered a fashionable hat hidden under the surface of Jacques Louis David’s portrait of Monsieur and Madame Lavoisier, raising a number of questions about the complex interplay of fashion, politics, and portraiture in the ancien régime, and the practice of updating portraits to reflect rapidly changing social and sartorial mores (figs. 1, 2). An investigation into the origins and reception of Madame Lavoisier ’s hat—a style known as the chapeau à la Tarare—reveals a powerful partisan message rooted in the turbulent political landscape of preRevolutionary France, and a possible explanation for the portrait’s alteration, beyond aesthetic or compositional concerns. overleaf: fig. 1 Jacques Louis David (French, 1748–1825). Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743–1794) and Marie Anne Lavoisier (Marie Anne Pierrette Paulze, 1758–1836), 1788. Oil on canvas, 102 1/4 × 76 5/8 in. (259.7 × 194.6 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman Gift, in honor of Everett Fahy, 1977 (1977.10)