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Le plaisir de l'été (Summer Pleasure)
  • Date: 1730s or 1740s
  • Object Type: Painting
  • Medium: Oil on canvas
  • Image size: 45.6 x 35.8 cm
  • Inv: P472
  • Location: Small Drawing Room
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Description
Provenance
Further Reading
  • In 1743 and 1744, Louis Surugue published engravings after two horizontal compositions by Pater, one under the title "Le plaisir de l'été", the other as "Le désir de plaire". The latter one depicts a toilet scene in an interior. These two works, probably created by Pater as pendants, are today lost. A whole group of paintings with vertical compositions are based on these engravings. They were painted towards the middle of the eighteenth century, after Pater's death, in styles different from Pater's own. These versions prove that Pater's erotic compositions remained highly popular.

    Pater's originals are good examples how, after Watteau's death, the Fête galante became more narrative and more openly erotic. A vertical version after "Le désir de plaire" in the Louvre has sometimes been regarded as the pendant to P472 but was painted by a different painter after Pater's model.