In the painting The Swing is captured a moment of complete spontaneity and joie de vivre, but also alludes to the illicit affair that may have already been going on, or is about to begin. It depicts a young woman on a swing pushed by an elderly man presumably her husband while a lover looked from the bushes and a pink shoe flew from the foot in the direction of a winged marble statue that resembles Cupid, the Roman god of love and desire. In the 18th century in France, the swing was a conventional symbol for infidelity and generally was read as a sexual metaphor, due to the rhythm of movement and the positioning of the body, with extended legs, at the moment when the swing's arc reached its climax. A woman's shoeless foot symbolized nudity and the loss of innocence.
The garden, a space outside the artificial rules of society, was associated with freedom and the natural. In the foreground (right), a tiny white lapdog - a common symbol of faithfulness - at the husband's feet seems to sound the alarm by barking on the woman's bawdy behavior, but he takes no notice. On the left, the statue of Cupid raises a finger to his lips to prevent the two Venus-putti beneath the swing from giving the game away.