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A lady, supported by her confidante, mourns the end of an affair, as a servant returns her portrait and unopened love-letter. The subject is typical of the sentimental bourgeois genre scenes with which the artist first made his reputation. A label attached to its stretcher reveals that it formed part of an important early commission of gallant genre scenes painted for the Avignon collector, Calvet de Lapalun. Boilly was noted for his meticulous technique and 'The Sorrows of Love', in particular, is remarkable for the artist’s masterly use of colour in the rendering of the shot-silks of the costumes.