Social Graces

This work began as a study of an Ingres drawing ‘Embracing Couple’ (c.1719). The central female figure originally depicted recoiling from a suitor’s advances in Antoine Watteau’s ‘Gathering near a Fountain’ (c.1720). The small conflict between background characters in Watteau’s original miniature scene has been brought center stage as an absurd caricature of a debutante’s social responsibility during this period to fend off the unwanted advances of potential suiters.