What music I could write if I had you with me always. (Elgar)

The Painting is by Fragonard and can be seen in the Wallace Collection in London

(Quote below slightly amended.)

A young girl, carves her initial on the bark of a tree, while observed by her pet spaniel, the symbol of her fidelity to her love. The theme reflects the increasing sensibilité of the second half of the eighteenth century. Its scale and careful technique also show Fragonard varying his style to echo the contemporary taste for the ‘little masters’ of seventeenth-century Holland, although he continued to animate such stylistic references with his own inimitable theatrical lighting, delicate draughtsmanship and calligraphic traceries of hair and foliage.