The Three Graces

Near the bottom on the right the painter signed Regnault, an II. Year II was the second year of the French Republic's new calendar, running from September 1793 to September 1794, the period of the Terror. In those months Regnault painted three goddesses of grace and beauty standing naked in a garden. They take the pose handed down from ancient sculpture. The middle one is seen from behind, her arms over her sisters' shoulders, and the sister on the right looks straight out at us. Each wears flowers in her hair, and daisies dot the grass at their feet. The painted surface is an octagon a little over two metres high. It came up in the sales held after the painter's death, in 1830 and again in 1857, and reached the Louvre in 1869 with the bequest of the collector Louis La Caze.