Focus on this artwork and explain the Analysis.
The painting has been described as an evocation of two lovers leaning against each other in the whirlwind of a waltz. The female model may be Virginie Binet, the mother of the artist's son, born shortly after the creation of this painting and visible in The Wheat Sifters (1854). Several preparatory drawings for the painting are known.
The use of radiography has made it possible to determine with certainty that the Lyon version of The Happy Lovers preceded the version preserved in Paris: the study of the first reveals that the original format was square, but that Courbet added a lower band 10 cm wide; moreover, pentimenti are apparent, the woman's hand was leaning on the man's shoulder and the setting was a bay and not a landscape. The Paris version, a repetition of this motif but of a smaller size, does not reveal any pentimenti on analysis.
radiography pentimenti The Wheat Sifters