It depicts a female pianist, dressed in a golden gown, who is pulled up from her stool by a male violinist, who embraces her with one hand around her waist while they kiss.

The painting was later used to advertise the perfume Tabu by Dana, and may possibly have been the inspiration of a scene in Raj Kapoor's 1949 film Barsaat and subsequently his R. K. logo.

The Kreutzer Sonata is an oil painting on canvas by René-Xavier Prinet,[1] who was inspired by Leo Tolstoy's 1889 novella of the same name, the title of which is based on Beethoven's violin and piano composition dedicated to Rudolph Kreutzer, a music piece renowned for its diverse emotions; intense anger, deep meditation, and extreme happiness.

[2][3] The story portrays the murder of a wife by her husband, Pozdnyshev, who suspects her of being unfaithful with the violinist, Trukachevsky, after returning home and seeing them sitting at the dinner table.

[9] People looked at the advertisement and assumed the company paying for it linked the embracing couple with the fragrance.

[3][11] Gershon Legman, in his Rationale of the Dirty Joke (2007), noted the use of the painting in the Tabu advertisement and described the pair's pose as "inspired by Tolstoy's shocked remarks about the 'eroticism' of Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata when played by a man and a woman".