Narcisse-Virgilio Diaz de la Peña, 'Venus and Two Cupids', 1847

In a vaguely wooded setting, with a bluish clearing to the right, a woman, who is traditionally identified as Venus, sits with two naked cupids pressing into her lap from either side. The whole is very rapidly and thickly painted. Venus’s skirt is painted in thick strokes of pinks and whites swirled together, with dashes of red-brown helping to shape the folds. Her face, which is deep in shadow, has been left unfinished. The legs of the cupid on the left are boldly outlined in the same dark red paint as that in Venus’s skirt.

The composition is intimately related to a more finished work with the title Love’s Caresses (Madame Diaz and her two Sons) (private collection). It can also be linked to numerous other such works by Diaz, and forms part of his extensive output of Venus-type figures, usually accompanied by children, which he produced from about 1846 to 1863. They are almost always seated in forest settings, the groupings framed by trees on either side. Despite their mythological subject matter, they were also very influenced by depictions of the Virgin Mary and Christ Child by Correggio.

Critics in the nineteenth century remarked on the artist’s fondness for such subjects, with Théophile Silvestre in 1856 comparing his production with that of a factory, prompted, as he put it, by insatiable demand on the part of the dealers and public. A year later, on the occasion of Diaz’s public sale, a critic expressed a certain weariness with ‘the lack of variety which you meet in the subjects of this artist’s paintings: nymphs and Cupids, Cupid disarmed, The education of Cupid, Cupid’s Caresses, Faithful Cupid etc...’. Nevertheless, such paintings continued to be extremely popular with collectors.