9pm in the Tessé Room – Uses of Space

Composite picture of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Tessé Room by Heather Nickels. This picture shows how many servants would have been at work in such a room in the evening, and at what tasks: liveried male servants guard the doors, female servants tidy up the space by sweeping the floor and re-arranging items in the room. The two upper-class women seated on the sofa wear different styles because clothing design changed rapidly at the end of the century. For more information on the very fashionable portrait on the wall, see: https://bt.barnard.edu/ave2015/project3/2015/04/04/portraits/.

Here, both servants and masters are pictured in the Tessé Room together. In preparation for an event that evening – for which the two mistresses of the house are elegantly dressed – the servants sweep the floors and tables, move the chairs around and those in livery get into position for the night’s festivities. While the servants are hard at work, the two women of the household relax on one of the comfortable and cushioned couches, a relatively new invention in the 18^th century. Prior to this era, chairs would have been fairly stiff, and uncomfortable for females wearing stays, the predecessor of the corset.

Note: Uniforms on the male servants taken from an image here: https://austenonly.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/livery_1.jpg.

Objects Added to the Tessé Room:

The same broom added to the morning room has been added to this evening view of the Tessé Room. It comes from a painting entitled, “A pause at the piano,” by Théophile Emmanuel Duverger (1821-1886/1901).