We do not know whether somone commissioned Lancret to paint this series of pictures on copper of The Four Times of Day: Morning, Midday, Afternoon and Evening. He began them sometime before September 1739, when Morning was exhibited at the Salon. Painting series of pictures was something of a speciality for Lancret – he had already produced The Four Seasons in about 1719, The Four Elements by August 1732, and The Four Ages of Man by July 1735. The set of The Four Times of Day was complete by February 1741, when the engraver Nicolas de Larmessin III presented proofs of his engravings of them to the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris (The Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture). The absence of any owner or patron’s name on Larmessin’s engravings suggests that Lancret may have painted the pictures speculatively with the aim of making money from the engravings, as there was a long-established taste for buying prints in series. Many of Lancret’s sets of paintings were the subject of financially successful sets of engravings.

Lancret may have known Boucher’s series of The Four Times of Day, as the activities in Boucher’s Morning, Midday and Evening show some similarity with those in Lancret’s paintings. However, Lancret’s pictures are more narrative-based and story-like than those of Boucher.

Lancret painted on small copper panels on other occasions, for example The Birdcatchers, probably of 1738 and its pendant Pastoral Revels, which is dated 1738 (both now in the Wallace Collection, London). A silvery metal coating was applied to the panels before painting, perhaps in an effort to stop the copper from corroding. Painting on copper would have allowed for fine and detailed brushwork, but why Lancret should have used copper for only a brief period of his career – around 1738 – is unknown. In these paintings he paid great attention to detail in the hands and faces of the principal figures, and made numerous small adjustments to produce particular expressions and gestures.