Nicolas Lancret (Paris 1690-1743)

Of the several depictions of this subject by Lancret, the present picture is by far the largest and most accomplished, and gives the greatest prominence to a lush landscape setting. Other versions, extant or recorded, are small vertical canvases that are sometimes paired with versions of D'un Baiser que Tircis...; one of these pairs was engraved by Silvestre (see Wildenstein, op. cit., figs. 82-3) with captions that explain their subjects (fig. 1). In Que le Coeur d'un Amant..., the bagpipe player, who had once loved Silvie, is now oblivious to her jealous gaze and has eyes only for his coy new love, Lisette. A drawing of the pipes player was in the collection of Baron Edmond de Rothschild in the late 19th century and is today in Waddesdon Manor; the same figure appears in an overdoor from the Salon of the Hôtel de Boullongne (Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Paris).

This is probably a work of the late 1720s or early 1730s, a dating confirmed by Mary Tavener Holmes. Its silvery palette and creamy handling of paint display Lancret's talents at their most seductive; rarely did the artist come as close to finding a visual language to equal the pastoral poetry of Watteau's late, monumental fêtes champêtres.