Impulse ebay purchase: a blow by blow

I saw it on the effortlessly addictive Anonymous Works. It had a very appealing awkwardness and was quite ambitious. While clearly beyond the capabilities of the painter, this piece was very earnestly striving for something big.

On an impulse, I went over to ebay and put in a bid even though it appeared to have a rather arbitrarily high price. Now I am a very infrequent ebayer— an umbrella here, an Austrian deer antler trophy there. A few times I've had someone swoop in at the last minute or two and snatch the sale. Perhaps I expected to be 'saved' by another such kamikaze bidder. But no.

Know that I tend to have buyer's remorse about virtually everything ('I should have gotten the cinnamon Freshen Up!') and need to just keep moving. Happily, the seller was a Brooklyn resident and my transaction could be completed without intervening mail delay. So yesterday, on an inordinately sultry afternoon I walked over to Carroll Gardens, had a chat with the seller's wife (very nice), picked up my prize, and got some exercise (3.6 miles door to door and back).

A little bit of educated Googling just moments ago finds that the original model for my purchase was François Boucher's The Toilet of Venus, in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Commissioned by Madame de Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV, for the Château de Bellevue near Paris, the painting was completed in 1751. Madame de Pompadour had played the title role in La Toilette de Vénus staged at Versailles in 1750. 

Relatively speaking, I'd say my copy is not too bad after all.