This painting is a pendant to The Love Letter (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.). When exhibited at the Salon of 1753, the two pictures were described as overdoors from Bellevue, one of Madame de Pompadour's châteaux. By the end of her life, they had been transferred to the vestibule of her Paris residence. Boucher first used the motif in a canvas entitled The Fountain of Love (J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu), which is signed and dated 1748; the same invention was adapted for a large tapestry, also called The Fountain of Love, first woven in 1755. The idea may derive from The Tease by Lancret, in which the roles of the boy and girl are reversed.

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