The Turkish Lovers
by HUET, Christophe, Oil on canvas, 145 x 98 cm
This painting forms part a set of three decorative panels, possibly conceived originally as a set of four - two western and two oriental subjects. Each panel features pairs of lovers. The lovers in the present painting are dressed in the Turkish costume, the fashion for which was popularised in eighteenth-century France through the paintings and drawings of Boucher, Le Prince and Carle van Loo and the pastels of Liotard.
The series is likely to have been painted for an eighteenth-century French town-house or château. The other two panels, entitled The Picnic and The Toast, showing pairs of lovers in western costume, are now in a private collection.