Henri Schlesinger was a painter of portraits and genre subjects. He was born in Frankfurt and later became a French citizen. In this painting a young woman is being courted by an older man. They are finely dressed in 18th century costume, perhaps inspired by a historic novel. Given that the man’s hat and the woman’s cloak and shoes are discarded in the foreground, the woman may have rejected her suitor’s advances. The title refers to a lost cause and the look on the woman’s face certainly supports this interpretation.