Les adieux à la nourrice

Lauren examines the heart-wrenching painting of a baby being given back to his parents after being fostered out to a nurse. Many eighteenth century aristocratic and bourgeois children spent the first year or so if their lives in the country with a wet nurse. Even in the nineteenth century, sickly babies like Saint Thérèse of Lisieux were sent to live at the home of a wet nurse until they were weaned. To quote:

Rousseau had previously published his work Emile, or On Education which was not well received in France (at first).  In the first book of this work, he strongly advocated that it was a mother's first duty to nurse her own babies, rather than hire a wet nurse.

Aubry seems to play with this idea. The reaction of the infant is so strong when he his handed to his mother, that he does not even look up at her; his eyes are locked on the wet nurse's face.  So strong is the emotion of all figures in the composition, that without the title of the work, one may suspect a child is being taken from its family rather than returning to it.

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