盗まれた接吻

This little scene of a woman caught mid-kiss at a doorway, glancing back at the room she is about to be pulled from, was long hung under one famous name, Fragonard. But the hand that painted it was most likely his sister-in-law and pupil, Marguerite Gérard, who lived and worked in his household in the 1780s. You can read her fascination with Dutch painting in the fabrics. The satin of the woman's dress and the shawl slipping off her shoulder are rendered with a patient, almost tactile precision that sets the picture apart from Fragonard's looser touch. It was popular enough that an engraving of it was made by the summer of 1788, which is partly how we date it. A century later it went to the Hermitage, where it still hangs.