An Embarrassing Proposal

Watteau painted this around 1715, the year the old king Louis XIV finally died after 72 years on the throne. What followed, the Regency, swapped the stiff grandeur of Versailles for something lighter and more private, and Watteau all but invented the picture that matched it: the fete galante, well-dressed young people idling in a park, flirting, making music. Here five of them pause. A man leans in with some request, a woman turns away, and the exact nature of the proposal is left for you to guess. X-rays have shown he painted it over an earlier scene, with a guitar player where the seated figures now sit. Catherine the Great bought it for the Hermitage in 1769, where it still hangs.