Rouge: Placing roses upon your Cheeks

Madame de Pompadour applying Rouge

Rouge was in huge demand during this colourful, fun-loving period, a fashionable lady could not go without it, she would have rouge amongst her many other cosmetic pots, with a variety of shades to chose from; perhaps, if she was wealthy enough she could keep all her paints and lotions in dainty little coffers and immensely pretty porcelain boxes created by the fashionable Sevres company (patronised by Madame de Pompadour).

Pommade Pot

Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, before and after she became worldly famous Madame de Pompadour was also a slave to rouge, when on her deathbed in 1764 her last request, after receiving the last rights was to powder her face with rouge, clearly she wanted to depart as stylishly as she had lived. The whole Paris seemed to love a rosy, crimson or scarlet complexion to the approval and disapproval of many; the womanising charmer Casanova thought much of it, and said it gave a sort of 'amorous fury' to the complexion. Many magazines wrote in praise and mockery of rouge and face painting in general, one wrote mockingly that all woman insisted on wearing masks of white and red, noting that the white was Spanish and the red was Italian (reference to where most popular face paints came from; Spanish White contained bismuth with combination of chalk or starch and was very widely used). There was of course loads to chose from when buying rouge, Mlle Martin from Paris was known to have sold the most exclusive rouge and reputably the best, and indeed all the female royalty of Europe placed orders for it (she distributed hers readily packed in irresistibly pretty Sevres porcelain containers), Baronne de d'Oberkirch who visited her famous rouge store laughingly noted 'rarely does a duchess get a hold of one by mistake', clever Mlle Martin sold her product only to costumers of the the highest rank.
Pompadour's weakness for rouge was also used as juicy little sniped to be taken advantage off and included in all those horrible caricatures that continued to grow in numbers, as she continued to grow in power; one even depicted her as a all-rouged up monkey in gorgeous rococo surroundings which only highlights the grotesques of the monkey.

Two lovers both dolled up in rouge and of the same shade, on the
 cheeks and lips.

Many wrote of the dangers of face paint; rouge was part of the dangerous lead-based cosmetics which with frequent use could lead to loosing both your hair and teeth, begetting a rotten complexion, and in some very sad cases leading to death (Maria Gunning and the courtesan Kitty Fisher both died because they were just too fond of painting themselves).
What is particularly interesting is that during this century, people began to be really become aware of the dangers that of lead-based products posed to the skin, yet throughout the century rouge as immensely important and continued to be so until the French revolution discarded it for being to ancient regime. Yet before this men and woman alike indulged themselves in lead-based paints and powders always led of course by the refined taste set in Versailles where all sorts of rouged complexions could be viewed like Boucher's palette with all its wide ranging pastel pinks. Apparently by 1781 it was noted that two million pots of rouge were sold in France each year, everyone seemed to have adopted a nonchalant attitude towards it and clearly they were willing to risk the all to common and dreadful results in order to achieve or come as close as possible to the rococo ideal beauty and in terms of skin tone this meant a complexion where lilies and roses merge together, and since such a skin was hard to come by naturally rouge became a constant companion for woman and many men, despite its frequent, disastrous drawbacks.