Jean-Etienne Liotard review – a joyous time machine back to the Enlightenment

Royal Academy, London
This subtly radical artist put rarely seen smiles on the faces of his princesses and aristocrats, creating a lace-framed snapshot of the Enlightenment era

Some artists express their age so perfectly that looking at their work is like travelling in a time machine. Jean-Etienne Liotard is one of those redeemers of lost time. His art is a lace-framed photograph of the Enlightenment.

If you think the 18th century was all wigs, toffs and hangings, the subtle radicalism of Liotard’s art should change your mind. The 1700s were an age of revolution in life and thought. The violent climax of that revolution is foreseen here, eerily, in a portrait of the future Queen Marie Antoinette of France when she was a seven-year-old Austrian princess. She looks assured and confident. She will die at the guillotine.

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