"The Interrupted Sleep"

François Boucher - Oil
La Toilette (1750) is an oil on canvas painting by François Boucher. In this charming scene, a young herder of goats is using a feather to tickle the neck of a sleeping shepherdess who has fallen asleep after picking some flowers. This totally unrealistic picture -- notice the handsome dress of the young girl, and the huge flowers which would never have grown in the wild was part of an extremely popular genre: the shepherdess and her swain. This painting (53 x 67 cm) is now in the Collection of Metropolitan Museum of Art.