The Stolen Kiss (painting)

Jean-Honoré Fragonard · c. 1787

The story

The Stolen Kiss is an oil painting on canvas executed in 1787 and located in the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg. It has been historically attributed to the French Rococo artist Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806). At 45 by 55 centimetres (18 in × 22 in), the painting is a genre scene influenced by Dutch Golden Age painting, depicting a young couple in a secretive romance, set in the foreground – a subject that was favoured before the French Revolution among French aristocrats.

In the late 18th century, The Stolen Kiss belonged to Stanisław August Poniatowski, the last monarch of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and was hosted in the Lazienki Palace in Warsaw. With the acquisition of the palace in the early 19th century by Tsar Alexander I, the painting effectively became part of the Russian imperial collections. It was transferred in 1895 to the Hermitage Museum, where it remains.

The traditional attribution of The Stolen Kiss to Fragonard is based on a mention of him as the author, with an etching of the painting published in 1788. However, it has been noted that the style of the painting, though close to Fragonard's works such as The Bolt, is more characteristic of the artist's sister-in-law and apprentice, Marguerite Gérard; because of that, some scholars consider the painting to be either a collaboration by Gérard and Fragonard, or solely by Gérard.

Artist: Jean-Honoré Fragonard
Date: c. 1787
Collection: Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia
Movement: Rococo
Medium: oil paint, canvas
Size: 45 × 55 cm

Story adapted from the Wikipedia article and its contributors, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Facts from Wikidata (CC0). Image: Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

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