Scene of Directory Life, Men and Women from L’Optique du Jour

After Jacobin control faded, with its repression of exuberant social life as well as political diversity, the following years saw a rebirth of open pleasures. This image focuses on fashionable men and women enjoying the good life. Some contemporaries would see this as excessive and self–indulgent, and far bolder displays of sexuality and materialism. Indeed, what one sees here was at least surprising since only the nobility and the very rich had before 1789 experienced much in the radiant way evident in this image.