Face Painting in 18th Century France

In writing Refiner’s Fire, book 6 of my American Patriot Series, I’ve been doing a lot of research on fashion so I can describe my characters’ look accurately. While Jonathan Carleton is temporarily back among the Shawnee at the beginning of this installment, the woman he loves, Elizabeth Howard, is in France, the ultimate fashion destination during the second half of the 18th century. In my last post I took a look at 18th century hairstyles, and this post will cover the specifics of makeup during that period.

In England and France both men and women of the higher classes wore cosmetics from the 17th through most of the 18th century. The portrait of the French artist François Boucher by Gustaf Lundberg at right gives an idea of  what men’s makeup might look like. 

In general the French applied makeup more heavily than the English. The goal was not to look natural, but to make an obvious statement of one’s class identity, with the added benefit that cosmetics also served to hide blemishes or the effects of disease, age, or sun. In fact, makeup was actually called “paint.” Wearing it identified one as aristocratic and à la mode. Naturally those of the bourgeois class who aspired to the heights of fashion and/or were trying to elevate their social status would also use cosmetics, although they generally didn’t apply them as heavily as the aristocracy did.

The ideal woman of the 18th century had a high forehead; plump, rosy cheeks; and white, or at least pale, skin. The use of heavy white paint on the face was actually considered more respectable than displaying your own naturally light skin. Fashionable eye colors included black, chestnut, or blue. Slightly full, semicircular, eyebrows that tapered at the ends into a half moon shape were preferred, as were small, soft, red lips with a slightly larger bottom lip that created a rosebud effect. The portraits of François Boucher, like the ones below, illustrate this look very well.

White face paint, called blanc, was applied across the entire face and shoulders, and veins were then traced on with blue pencil to highlight the skin’s whiteness. Blanc could be made from bismuth or vinegar. But because of its opacity, a formulation using lead was most popular, even though it was known to cause lead poisoning. Women actually died from using it. Talk about devotion to fashion!

Rouge was made of vermilion ground from cinnabar, which included mercury, or from creuse made by exposing lead plates to vinegar vapor. Like blanc both are toxic, but obviously that didn’t deter its users! Safer vegetable sources for rouge included safflower, wood resin, sandalwood, and brazilwood, which would be mixed with greases, creams, or vinegars to create a paste. Court ladies rouged their cheeks in wide swaths from the corner of the eye to the corner of the lips. Bourgeois and provincial nobility preferred neat circles of rouge at the center of the cheek to highlight the eyes and the skin’s whiteness.

The lips could be reddened with distilled alcohol or vinegar. By mid-century, however, you could buy red pomades for lips, some in stick form. Preferred shades varied from pink and coral to sometimes as dark as burgundy. Although in portraits you can see a bit of reddish color around the eyes, possibly caused by the contrast with the blanc or a reaction to the lead in it, they were otherwise left bare. Eyebrows might be darkened with kohl, elderberry, burnt cork, or lampblack. Some men and women of the court plucked or painted their eyebrows or used mouse fur to create false ones. I know….eeeeewwww! I can’t imagine what that must have looked like.

Beauty patches, or mouches, were part of the formal or aristocratic look and were meant to heighten the contrast with the white skin. Most popular in the 17th century but worn into the 18th as well, they were made of silk velvet, satin, or taffeta and attached to the face with glue. There could be many different sizes and shapes, and they were worn in various positions with specific meanings. Occasionally several were clustered together on the cheek or forehead in designs like trees or birds.

Below is a short, fun video on applying makeup in the 18th century style.

By the 1750s and 1760s cosmetics were becoming so popular that coiffeuses—vanity table sets—were widely advertised, and to capture the best light, dressing rooms began to be built facing north. By 1781, Frenchwomen were using about two million pots of rouge a year. But styles continue to evolve. In this case, with the advent of the French Revolution at the end of the decade, the painted look fell out of favor along with the aristocracy. Thereafter, fashion dictated a more natural style—if you were lucky enough to keep your head.

How do you think 18th century makeup and hairstyles compare with what people are wearing today? Are they any more bizarre than what you can see on the street or in your local Wal-Mart? I’d love to hear your opinion and comparisons!

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J. M. Hochstetler is the daughter of Mennonite farmers and a lifelong student of history. She is also an author, editor, and publisher. Her American Patriot Series is the only comprehensive historical fiction series on the American Revolution. Northkill, Book 1 of the Northkill Amish Series coauthored with Bob Hostetler, won Foreword Magazine’s 2014 Indie Book of the Year Bronze Award for historical fiction. Book 2, The Return, received the 2017 Interviews and Reviews Silver Award for Historical Fiction and was named one of Shelf Unbound’s 2018 Notable Indie Books. One Holy Night, a contemporary retelling of the Christmas story, was the Christian Small Publishers 2009 Book of the Year and a finalist in the ACFW Carol Award.

Marie Antoinette and the Intrigues of Louis XVI’s Court

Now that the Northkill Amish Series is finished, I’m back to work on my American Patriot Series. Next up is Book 6, Refiner’s Fire, in which we’re going to catch up with the American commissioners in Paris, who negotiated France’s support in the war with Britain. In this episode Jonathan Carleton’s uncle, Admiral Alexandre Bettár, le comte de Caledonne, sweeps Elizabeth Howard off to France to remove her from the reach of assassins sent by British General Henry Clinton to kill her after her rescue from a British prison ship in New York Harbor.

Caledonne is highly connected at the French court, so Elizabeth is going to end up being drawn into life at court during the reign of King Louis XVI. For this book I’m delving deeply into what was going on at Versailles during 1778 and 1779. There’s always a multitude of complicated and dangerous intrigues swirling in the shadows of every royal court—and especially so in France—which happily will provide plenty of opportunities for getting Elizabeth neck-deep into even more hot water.

Marie Antoinette at the age of thirteen,
Joseph Ducreux

A major player, of course, will be Marie Antoinette, the queen who, along with her husband, Louis XVI, met a tragic end in the French Revolution during the Reign of Terror. Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna was born on November 2, 1755, at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, the youngest daughter of Maria Theresa, empress of the Habsburg Empire, and Francis I, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1770 she was married to Louis-Auguste of France, her second cousin once removed and the French dauphin, or heir to the throne, first by proxy in Vienna, and then in a lavish ceremony in the royal chapel at Versailles, before more than 5,000 guests. She was 14 and he was 15. She would go down in history with the French form of her name: Marie Antoinette.

Life as a public figure was not easy for a young girl. She was dropped suddenly into struggles for power, prestige, and financial gain between royals and nobles, the king’s brothers and devout aunts, and his ministers, diplomats, and other advisors, played out through highly complex French customs of etiquette and modes of address. Any influence wielded by women was unofficial, and since romantic liaisons were de rigueur at court, the greatest influence belonged to mistresses rather than wives.

Marie Antoinette in Court Dress,
Louise Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, 1778

Let’s take a look at how the court scene would have appeared. According to long tradition, women were expected to wear a round spot of rouge on each cheek. This wasn’t the delicate highlighting you’d see today, but huge, precisely drawn scarlet circles. Rouge was very expensive, and so a badge of rank and distinction. Mozart, for one, thought the French court makeup detestable, “unbearable to the eyes of an honest German.” Sounds like it! One’s hair also had to be powdered. The queen popularized hair styles called poufs, monstrous affairs supplemented by wool, tow, pads, and wire up to three feet high and topped by the panache, a spray of feather plumes, as you can see in the portrait at right.

The portrait also shows the cumbersome court dress with its wide hoops. Managing the long, heavy train was an art form. Young ladies who were to be presented at court had to be coached by a special dancing master in Paris to move in a “Versailles glide” without seeming to touch the ground, and to make the three requisite curtsies, which began at the door, with modesty and grace. And then the lady’s appearance was likely to be torn to pieces by the spectators. The queen gradually began to make changes in court customs, abandoning heavy makeup and wide-hooped panniers. The new fashion she introduced called for a simpler look, initially in the rustic robe à la polonaise style.

View from Place d'Armes, c. 1722, by Pierre-Denis Martin

In contrast to the tortuous formality of the court, there was an extraordinary lack of security at Versailles. Royal bodyguards did use spaniels to ferret out vagrants who set themselves up in the palace’s various nooks and crannies, but there wasn’t much else they could do. Traditionally every French subject had the right of access to their sovereign, so the palace was open to the public. As a result random people wandered in and out, thronging the antechambers and even at times trying to push into the royals’ private apartments. A public dinner was held regularly, called the grand couvert, and anyone who was decently clothed could come to watch the royals eat. Men were required to wear a sword, but if that was lacking, one could be obtained at the palace gates.

Fishwives and market women held a customary right of access to the queen and used the privilege to comment freely on her perceived failings and those of the princesses. Then there were the royals’ beloved pets. Dogs, cats, monkeys, and other animals had free rein in the palace, roaming over the furniture and even on the table at meals. It was common for foreigners to remark on how dirty the place was! I can just imagine. Ugh!

As far as privacy was concerned, the king and queen were attended at every moment by numerous nobles except during the most intimate marital act—which, however, could not be accomplished without witnesses to the king’s trip to the queen’s suite! This in itself was a problem. Louis didn’t consummate the marriage for 7 years, which, as you can imagine, strained their relationship, the more so since they were expected to speedily produce an heir. In the fishbowl that was the royal court, rumors were bound to fly, and so they did, including the claim that Louis was incapable of sexual relations. Part of the complication may have been that they had met only two days before their wedding and were almost complete strangers. He was also shy, and both were young and inexperienced.

Marie Antoinette and Her Children,
Louise Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, 1787

It surely didn’t help that the French public was hostile to the union. France’s alliance with Austria had drawn the country into the disastrous Seven Years’ War, which had ended in defeat by the British, the loss of Canada and France’s Caribbean colonies, and a massive national debt. His cold behavior toward her in public fueled the gossip but was evidently due to his fear that she would attempt to manipulate him in favor of Austrian interests. They did develop an affectionate relationship, however, and their marriage was finally consummated in 1777. After 8 years of marriage, Marie Antoinette gave birth to Marie-Thérèse Charlotte, Madame Royale, who was born at Versailles on 19 December 1778—with numerous royals and nobles looking on! They eventually had 4 children, one of whom died in infancy.

Since Marie Antoinette had very few official duties, she passed the time by forming deep friendships with her ladies in waiting at court and eventually befriended a number of her male admirers—the source of more malicious gossip. She spent most of her time devising social events and indulging her extravagant tastes. While the country was in the midst of a serious financial crisis and the common people were suffering great want, she spent huge amounts of money on the latest fashions and creating new ones, all manner of luxuries, and gambling. In spite of her initial popularity, a growing number of people turned against her. Widely circulated newspapers and cheap pamphlets spread vicious, pornographic gossip about her, calling her the“Austrian whore,” accusing her of sympathizing with France’s enemies, particularly her native Austria, and doing everything she could to undermine France, charging her with adultery, and even calling the parentage of her children into question. Increasingly she became the focus of the French people’s rage.

In reality, it was the 18th century colonial wars, including the Seven Years War and the American Revolution, that buried France under a mountain of debt. Those who owned most of the property paid little or no taxes, leaving the rest of the people saddled with an unreasonable burden. The natural result was growing resentment against the conspicuous spending of the king, queen, and nobles, which came to a head in 1789 with the beginning of the Revolution.

A side note: There’s no evidence that Marie Antoinette ever said “Let them eat cake,” when she was informed that the French peasants had no bread and were starving. That tale arose from the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions, written around 1766 when she was 11 years old. In fact, Marie Antoinette, who had been raised in a court where the monarchs believed that they were responsible for the welfare of their subjects, carried out many notable acts of charity during her reign. One observer wrote: “She was so happy at doing good and hated to miss any opportunity of doing so.” That she didn’t curtail her extravagant spending, however, was one of the factors that eventually led to her death on the guillotine.

All things considered, there’s more than enough juicy fodder here for a really entertaining plot for Refiner’s Fire. And I mean to make the most of it!

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J. M. Hochstetler is the daughter of Mennonite farmers and a lifelong student of history. She is also an author, editor, and publisher. Her American Patriot Series is the only comprehensive historical fiction series on the American Revolution. Northkill, Book 1 of the Northkill Amish Series coauthored with Bob Hostetler, won Foreword Magazine’s 2014 Indie Book of the Year Bronze Award for historical fiction. Book 2, The Return, releases April 1, 2017. One Holy Night, a contemporary retelling of the Christmas story, was the Christian Small Publishers 2009 Book of the Year.

Louis XVI of France and the American Revolution

Louis XVI at the age of 20
Joseph Duplessis, 1776 

I’m currently working on The Return, Book 2 of my Northkill Amish Series, co-authored with BobHostetler. It publishes in April next year, and as soon as it’s off my desk, I’m going to get back to my American Patriot Series. In Book 6, Refiner’s Fire, my heroine, Elizabeth Howard, is in danger, and in Jonathan Carleton’s absence, his uncle, le comte de Caledonne, takes her to France for safety. Caledonne is an admiral in the French navy; an intimate of the French king, Louis XVI; and a master of spies, which will give me an opportunity offer readers a glimpse into the machinations of the 18^th century French court. In my next post we’re going to take a look at the American commissioners to France during the Revolution and the intrigues surrounding them, but first, Louis!

He was born Louis-Auguste on August 23, 1754, in the Palace of Versailles, the second son and one of 7 children of Louis, the dauphin of France, and Marie-Josèphe of Saxony, the daughter of Frederick Augustus II, Prince-Elector of Saxony and King of Poland. Louis-Auguste’s grandparents were Louis XV and Maria Leszczyńska. At birth Louis-Auguste received the title Duc de Berry.

His parents favored his handsome older brother, Louis, duc de Bourgogne, who unfortunately died in 1761 at the age of nine, rather than their second son. Louis-Auguste was very shy, but he was fit and healthy and enjoying hunting with his grandfather and rough-and-tumble play with his brothers. He excelled as a student as well, with Latin, history, geography, and astronomy his favorite subjects. He also became fluent in Italian and English. As a young child he developed an interest in locksmithing, and this became a hobby as he grew older.

In 1765 Louis-Auguste’s father died of tuberculosis. Since his older brother had died several years earlier, this made eleven-year-old Louis-Auguste the new dauphin. Two years later his mother also died from tuberculosis, leaving him and his brothers and sisters orphans whose care and education were supervised by royal tutors.

Marie Antoinette and Her Children
Marie Louise Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, 1787

Louis-Auguste was only fifteen when he married 14-year-old Habsburg Archduchess Maria Antonia, better known by the French form of her name: Marie Antoinette, in May 1770. She was his second cousin once removed, the youngest daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and Empress Maria Theresa, a formidable force of nature who may have influenced her daughter’s indifferent response, “Let them eat cake,” many years later when she was informed that the French peasants had no bread and were starving. The two young people had met only two days before their wedding and were almost total strangers. That, along with his shyness and both their youth and inexperience, was problem enough. It didn’t help that the French public was hostile to this union. After all, France’s alliance with Austria had drawn the country into the disastrous Seven Years’War that ended in defeat at the hands of the British in both Europe and North America, the loss of Canada and France’s Caribbean colonies, and a massive national debt.

Louis XVI of France
Antoine-François Callet, 1789

The young couple’s relationship was strained during the first years of their marriage, as one might expect. In fact, it wasn’t until 1777 that their union was consummated, and in the fishbowl of a royal court, rumors were bound to fly. They certainly did, including the claim that Louis-Auguste was incapable of sexual relations. His cold behavior toward Marie in public fueled the gossip but was evidently due to his fear that she would attempt to manipulate him in favor of Austrian interests. They overcame these obstacles over time, however, and eventually had four children together.

Louis-Auguste’s grandfather died in 1774 on the eve of the American Revolution, and at the age of 19 Louis succeeded to the throne—and to the disastrous baggage of the French and Indian War. For Vergennes, the French foreign secretary, the Americans’ fight for independence offered an opportunity for France to humiliate their long-standing enemy and recover the territory they’d lost during the Seven Years’ War. Louis was persuaded to secretly send supplies, ammunition, and guns to the rebels, and in early 1778 he signed a formal Treaty of Alliance with the United States. Later that year France was once again at war with Britain, with Spain and the Netherlands soon joining in an anti-British coalition.

Washington and Rochambeau giving last orders before battle
Auguste Crowder, 1836

At first the French dragged their feet when it came to actually giving the Americans military aide. But finally in 1780 France sent large land and naval forces under Rochambeau and de Grasse, which arrived in North America in July 1780. Then in October 1781 a French naval blockade forced Cornwallis’s army to surrender at Yorktown. Lord North’s government fell as soon as news of this disaster reached London, and Great Britain was left no choice but to sue for peace. Although France delayed the end of the war into 1783, hoping to overrun more British colonies in India and the West Indies, in the end they gained little from the 1783 Treaty of Paris except a couple of small colonies.

The war cost France 1,066 million livres, which had to be financed through loans at high interest and later led to more oppressive taxes. Heaped on top of the debt remaining from the French and Indian War, this led to a financial crisis that increased the French people’s resentment of the aristocracy and the absolute monarchy of the French kings. Riots broke out in Paris in 1789, and the storming of the Bastille inaugurated the French Revolution. In June 1791, four months before the constitutional monarchy was declared, the situation was so unstable that Louis fled to Varennes, which gave credit to rumors that he was hoping for a foreign invasion to save his throne. In the eyes of the common people he became a hated symbol of the Ancien Régime’s tyranny.

Louis XVI was arrested and deposed during the insurrection of August 10, 1792. A little over a month later, on September 21, France’s constitutional monarchy was abolished and the First French Republic proclaimed. Louis was tried by the National Convention, found guilty of high treason, and executed by guillotine on January 21, 1793, as French citizen Louis Capet. The name referred to Hugh Capet, the founder of the Capetian dynasty, which the revolutionaries interpreted as Louis’ family name. Louis XVI was the only king of France ever to be executed. His death brought an end to more than a thousand years of French monarchy.

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J. M. Hochstetler is the daughter of Mennonite farmers, an author, editor, and publisher, and a lifelong student of history. Her American Patriot Series is the only comprehensive historical fiction series on the American Revolution. Her novel Northkill, Book 1 of the Northkill AmishSeries coauthored with bestselling author Bob Hostetler, won ForeWord Magazine’s 2014 INDYFAB Book of the Year Bronze Award for historical fiction. Book 2, The Return, releases in Spring 2017. One Holy Night, a contemporary retelling of the Christmas story, was the Christian Small Publishers 2009 Book of the Year.