The Use of Tears

This small canvas has gone by three names. Jules van Praet, a Belgian statesman who served for decades as secretary to King Leopold I and collected modern French painting, called it La Convalescente. When the Paris dealers Boussod, Valadon sold it in 1894 to Josiah Bradlee of Boston, it was La visite. The museum, which received it under Bradlee's will in 1903, calls it The Use of Tears.

Each name fits. A young woman lies in bed, holding the hand of an old woman in black who sits beside her in a carved chair. Bonington painted it in Paris in about 1826 or 1827.

Patrick Noon, who catalogued Bonington's complete work, identifies the old woman as the painter's own elderly servant. An English painter who knew Bonington, Thomas Shotter Boys, later recalled her living with him in the rue Saint-Lazare during his last illness. She seems to have posed for his friend Delacroix as well, in a study of an old woman painted around 1827.