She looks at the guitarist’s left hand as he is about to play a note, their collaboration on the musical score perhaps providing an opportunity for flirting. The woman’s informal clothing is not specific to any period, so it also helps set the scene in an undefined time. Watteau may have chosen its old-fashioned style to distance the scene from his own time. The guitarist here is dressed in a theatrical costume. The subject was also a familiar one in pastoral poetry, and the associations between Watteau’s paintings, music and poetry were recognised by his contemporaries.
Scenes of couples making music have a long tradition in European art, especially in Northern and Venetian painting.
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