The earliest dated mention of
The Stolen Kiss comes from the June 1788 issue of the
Mercure de France magazine, where an engraving by Nicolas François Regnault of Fragonard's painting was advertised as a pendant to
The Bolt. Shortly later in the 1790s, the work was purchased by
Stanisław August Poniatowski, the last monarch of the
first Rzeczpospolita; it was present in the catalogue of the Royal Picture Gallery at the
Lazienki Palace in
Warsaw in 1795. Perhaps it was bought at one of the auctions, which sold goods of the French aristocracy following the
Revolution of 1789. This would explain the silence of the sources about the acquisition of the work and its certain formal and thematic incompatibility with the other works of the collection. Poniatowski highly valued
The Stolen Kiss, and was willing to have it taken from Warsaw to Saint Petersburg upon his abdication in 1795; the shipment did not take place, though. After Poniatowski's death in 1798, his collection at the Lazienki Palace was formally succeeded by the nephew,
Józef Poniatowski, and later by the latter's sister
Maria Teresa, who sold the palace in 1817 to Tsar
Alexander I, effectively making
The Stolen Kiss part of the Russian imperial collection. The painting remained in the Lazienki Palace until 1895, when it was transferred to the Hermitage following a report from the imperial collection curator , who recommended
The Stolen Kiss, with four other paintings from Stanisław August's collection, to be present in the Hermitage on conservation and accessibility concerns. In 1922,
The Stolen Kiss was specifically compensated with the smaller
Polish Woman (now in the
National Museum in Warsaw), historically attributed to
Jean-Antoine Watteau, originally purchased into the Russian imperial collection in 1772 as part of the Crozat collection. ==Painting==