Beginning from the late 20th century, Russian and Western sources accept a theory developed within the Hermitage Museum that holds the painting to be a group portrait of the Comédie-Française players who performed in the playwright Florent Carton Dancourt's play The Three Cousins.

The figure is generally associated with an early full-length sanguine study (PM 64; RP 75), published as an etching engraved by Jean Audran (FDC 157); the earlier version of the subject was introduced by Watteau in Marriage Contract and Country Dancing (now in the Prado, Madrid)[8] and L'Accordee du Village (now in Sir John Soane's Museum, London).

There is also a now untraced sanguine and black chalk study of the woman and the boy (PM 541; RP R591) that closely corresponds, albeit in reverse, with the painting; Parker and Mathey, who attributed the drawing to Watteau, considered it to be a preliminary study,[15] and so did Nemilova and, during the 1984–1985 exhibition, Rosenberg; however, Eidelberg rejected that relation, as well as the sheet's authenticity, pointing out that the drawing is more corresponding to the etching rather than to the painting;[16] in the 1996 catalogue raisonné, Rosenberg and Louis-Antoine Prat also list the sheet as rejected.

In notes to Pellegrino Antonio Orlandi's Abecedario pittorico, Pierre-Jean Mariette referred to the work as Coquettes qui pour voir galans au rendez vous (transl.

"Coquettish women, who to meet gallant men go around..."), after the first verses of quatrains accompanying Thomassin's engraving for the Recueil Jullienne; Mariette thought the panel depicts "people in disguise for a ball, among whom is one dressed as an old man.

[24][25] Later sources, more prominently in France and Russia, similarly had various definitions on the subject: Johann Ernst von Munnich [ru] refers to the work as Personnages en masques (transl.

[28][29] In his writings, Pierre Hédouin [fr] referred to the work as Le Rendez-vous du bal masqué,[30] before Edmond de Goncourt's Catalogue raisonné... introduced the Mariette-mentioned title into common use.

Schéfer suggested from an inscription under Boucher's etching after the Berlin drawing, found in a copy of Figures des differents caracteres held by the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, that the old man on the right of the painting was modelled after Pierre-Maurice Haranger, a canon of the Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois who was a close friend of Watteau; the lady in red was thought by Schéfer to be the Comédie-Française actress Charlotte Desmares,[note 2] based on comparison of the composition with Lepicié's etching of her portrait by Charles-Antoine Coypel.

[48] In an article on the Hermitage's 1922–1925 exhibition of French paintings, published in the March 1928 issue of Gazette des Beaux-Arts, the Russian scholar Sergei Ersnt [ru] reported that according to an inscription found on the panel's verso, The Coquettes belonged to the painter Nicolas Bailly [fr][note 6] (1659–1736), a curator of the royal collections who authored a 1709–1710 inventory of the paintings in possession of King Louis XIV;[50] in 1984, Rosenberg said that he wasn't surprised about Ernst's report, given Bailly's relations within artistic circles.

[56][57] Authenticity of the panel has never been seriously questioned until the early 20th century, when the Russian art historian Nicolas Wrangel [ru] considered it to be a copy by Philippe Mercier, a prominent English follower of Watteau; in a letter to the German scholar Ernst Heinrich Zimmermann [de], who compiled an album and catalogue of Watteau's work, Wrangel pointed out that the blond actress lacks the coiffure seen in Thomassin's print, and there were also differences in the actor at the right.

[58][59] In the early 1970s, the panel's authenticity was questioned in the four-volume survey edited by Jean Ferré that, based on Wrangel's doubts and inconsistency found in contemporary sources, listed The Coquettes as "attributed to Watteau.

[21] The print was notably mentioned in François-Bernard Lépicié's obituary notice for Thomassin that appeared in the March 1741 issue of Mercure de France, and later by Pierre-Jean Mariette in Notes manuscrites; in subsequent years, it served as a source to a number of pastiches.