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

Terms

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, CA

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