Les deux baisers (The Two Kisses)
Artist
Philibert Louis Debucourt
(French, 1755–1832)
Date1786
Mediumcolor etching and aquatint with mezzotint and roulette on cream laid paper
Dimensions34 x 40.7 cm (plate), 39.1 x 45.8 cm (sheet)
ClassificationsPrints
Credit LineTheodore T. and Mary G. Ellis Fund
Object number2010.1
Label TextDebucourt based this work on his earlier painting Feigned Caress, which was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1785. Eighteenth-century French culture often characterized women one of two contrasting ways, as a tricksy coquette or as a morally chaste wife and mother. Here, the hoodwinked elderly husband revels in the illusory portrait of himself kissing his beautiful young wife. Meanwhile she coyly solicits an actual kiss from the handsome artist.ProvenanceR.M. Light and Company, Santa Barbara, CAOn View
Not on view
Philibert Louis Debucourt
about 1785
