Between Wealth and Love

By 1869 a Paris painter's fastest route to money ran through the dealer Goupil, who kept a branch in New York. Bouguereau sold him this canvas on 27 January that year, and before December was out it belonged to James Stebbins, a New York gas-company president who collected modern French pictures. What Stebbins bought is a costume piece set in the Italian Renaissance, with no event from history behind it. A girl in a pink dress sits between two men. The old one in fur leans in from her left, a small gilt casket open in his hand, and the young one in a red cap stands at her right with his palm on his chest. She looks past both of them, and the painter gives no hint which way she will go. He signed it at the lower right in Latin letters, W BOVGVEREAV, the spelling he used on his canvases.