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The Garter

1724
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 630
A man offers to help a woman reattach her garter, a common conceit in erotic painting and literature in eighteenth-century France. Her hand firmly rejects his advance, but the indecorous decision to reveal her leg in his presence suggests a ruse—perhaps inspired by the contents of the book she has discarded next to an already disrobed bronze statuette. The clock resembles the latest models by the famed furniture maker André Charles Boulle and includes a figure of Saturn, or Father Time, whose scythe has been stolen by Cupid.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: The Garter
  • Artist: Jean François de Troy (French, Paris 1679–1752 Rome)
  • Date: 1724
  • Medium: Oil on canvas
  • Dimensions: 25 1/2 × 21 1/8 in. (64.8 × 53.7 cm)
  • Classification: Paintings
  • Credit Line: Bequest of Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, 2019
  • Object Number: 2019.141.22
  • Curatorial Department: European Paintings

More Artwork

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Study of a Draped Figure, Jean François de Troy French, Red and white chalk, stumped, on blue prepared paper
Study of a Draped Figure
Jean François de Troy
ca. 1736–39
The Triumph of Mordecai, Jean François de Troy French, Oil on canvas
The Triumph of Mordecai
Jean François de Troy
ca. 1736
The Declaration of Love, Jean François de Troy French, Oil on canvas
The Declaration of Love
Jean François de Troy
ca. 1724
The Trojan Women Setting Fire to Their Fleet, Claude Lorrain (Claude Gellée) French, Oil on canvas
The Trojan Women Setting Fire to Their Fleet
Claude Lorrain (Claude Gellée)
ca. 1643
Self-Portrait with Two Pupils, Marie Gabrielle Capet (1761–1818) and Marie Marguerite Carraux de Rosemond (1765–1788), Adélaïde Labille-Guiard French, Oil on canvas
Self-Portrait with Two Pupils, Marie Gabrielle Capet (1761–1818) and Marie Marguerite Carraux de Rosemond (1765–1788)
Adélaïde Labille-Guiard
1785

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