A NAUGHTY PICTURE

Dear Reader – you must know by now how much your Blogger loves a coincidence. Here’s a strange one that has occurred over recent months. 

In April i stayed with friends who live just outside Paris. Their walls are covered with pictures and historic plates (the French have, or had, a tradition of recording events and places on china plates and my friends have one room where the walls are totally covered with sets of these plates – must be the very devil to dust). There is one picture, an oil painting, that always catches my eye. It is not in good condition and it is not particularly well painted and the subject matter … well, it seems to fall into that category where pretty shepherdesses are being wooed by men in wigs and embroidered coats, that is, not very good no matter how well executed.

 

Here it is:

 

 

This picture, untitled and unsigned, again caught my eye.There’s a girl on a swing, kicking her legs in the air and a young man below her looking up at her and apparently waving. The surface of the picture is very cracked and distorted but it is just possible to make out that she has kicked a shoe off and it is airborne at this precise moment (hard to catch such a moment as this if you are painting rather than photographing).  

I photographed this picture thinking that I might try to find out more about it (my name on the picture merely records that I took the picture of the picture). 

At this stage some of you might even be able to identify it or at least something to which it bears a strong resemblance. 

Now to the thing makes the coincidence.

 

Long before I saw the picture, in May last year,  I posted a blog in which I mentioned Clive James’s most recent book of poetry, ‘Nefertiti in the Flak Tower’, which I have kept close to the table in our kitchen ever since. I don’t read books of poetry straight through; I just keep them handy and dip in and read a bit from time to time. A few days ago I started to read a poem called, ‘Oval Room, Wallace Collection’. He refers to pictures by Boucher and by Fragonard that were ‘Created purely for the court’s delight’ and are, obviously (although we obviously can’t see them) meant to be erotic. The fourth verse made me sit up and take notice: 

Even when Fragonard’s girl in the swing

Splays her long legs. Kicks off one velvet shoe.

Knowing that the boy down there sees everything.

He can’t believe such miracles are true. 

Returning to the picture; look at it again with Mr James’s words in mind. See where the boy is looking and see now that he is not waving, he is pointing and I know what he is pointing at. Can you discern a slight but distinct swelling at his groin? Shameful young man! Flighty little hussy! 

So now I know that my friends’ picture is a copy and that it is, in a strange and somewhat naïve way, erotic.

 

Thanks, Mr James.