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Notes

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A pet dog was often used to imply fidelity in eighteenth-century painting, although Greuze invests the relationship of mistress and pet with a morbid intensity in keeping with the late eighteenth-century cult of sensibility. An indication of Greuze’s ambitions in these works is given in a letter he wrote to Prince Yussupov in 1790. The Prince had acquired a similar picture, in which the girl embraces a dove rather than a dog. Greuze wrote to him: ‘this dove, that she presses against her heart so lovingly…is but the image of her lover hidden beneath this emblem; her soul is troubled by a feeling so sweet and so pure that the most delicate woman could look at it with ease and without hurt…It is a great picture in a small canvas’.

The Wallace Collection

London

Title

The Souvenir

Date

1787–1789

Medium

oil on canvas

Measurements

H 52.2 x W 42.3 cm

Accession number

P398

Acquisition method

acquired by Richard Seymour-Conway, 4th Marquess of Hertford, 1864; bequeathed to the nation by Lady Wallace, 1897

Work type

Painting

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The Wallace Collection

Hertford House, Manchester Square, London, Greater London W1U 3BN England

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