Marguerite Gérard, Portrait of Jean-Honoré Fragonard,
c. 1787-1791.
Oil on panel, 21.8 x 16.1 cm. Private collection.
Authors : Edmond and Jules Goncourt
Layout :
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Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
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ISBN: 978-1-78525-097-2
“The touch of Fragonard resembles those accents which, in certain languages, give to mute words a melodious sound. His figures, though merely indicated, live, breathe, smile and delight. Their very indecisiveness has the attraction of a tender mystery. They speak in low voices and glide past on tiptoe. Their gestures are like furtive signs exchanged by lovers in the darkness. They are the voluptuous shades of the 18th century.”
— Paul de Saint-Victor
List of Illustrations
Biography
A
The Adoration of the Shepherds
The Ancient Theatre at Hadrian’s Villa near Tivoli
The Angora Cat
Annette and Lubin
Apollo and Diana Killing the Children of Niobe
B
The Bathers
The Battle of Minerva and Mars
The Birth of Venus
Blind Man’s Bluff 1
Blind Man’s Bluff 2
The Bolt
Bust of a Neopolitan Woman
C/D
Cascatelle Grandi in Tivoli
The Child’s First Steps towards His Mother, with Marguerite Gérard
The Cradle
The Debut of the Model
The Dream of Plutarch
F
Fantasy Portrait of the Abbé de Saint-Non
Farmer’s Children
The Fete at Rambouillet or The Island of Love
The Fete at Saint Cloud
The Flirt and the Youth
The Fountain of Love
François de Bourbon, Count of Enghien
G
Game in the Park (Le Jeu de la palette)
A Game of Horse and Rider
A Game of Hot Cockles
The Gardener
The Good Mother
The Grape Gatherer
Group of Putti
H
The Happy Family
The Happy Lovers (L’Instant désiré)
Head of a Young Man
Head of an Old Man
The High Priest Corésus Sacrificing Himself to Save Callirhoé
Hurdy-Gurdy Woman
I
I Reread Them with Pleasure
Inspiration
The Interrupted Sacrifice
J/K
Jean-Claude Richard, the Abbé de Saint-Non, dressed in Spanish style
Jéroboam Sacrificing to the Idols
Jérôme de Lalande
The Joys of Motherhood
The Kiss
L
Landscape with Shepherds and Flock of Sheep
Landscape with Washerwomen near a Pond Where a Donkey Has Stopped
The Laundresses
The Letter
The Letter or The Spanish Conversation
The Little Mischief-Maker
Love as Folly
The Love Letter
Love Letters
Love the Avenger
Love the Jester
Love Pursuing a Dove
Love the Sentinel
The Lover Crowned
M
The Master of the World
The Match to Powder Keg
The Meeting
Mercury and Argus
The Music Lesson
The Music (Portrait of Mr de la Bretèche)
N
Nègrepelisse Castle near Montauban
Night Scene or The Beggar’s Dream
O/P
Old Man with White Hair
Perrette and the Pot of Milk
A Philosopher Reading
Portrait of Anne-François d’Harcourt, Duke of Beuvron as a character of the Commedia
Portrait of François-Henri, Duke of Harcourt
Portrait of Jean-Honoré Fragonard, by Marguerite Gérard
Portrait, known as the Portrait of Denis Diderot
Portrait of a Man
Portrait of a Man (Presumed Portrait of Alexandre Maubert)
Portrait of Marie-Madeleine Guimard
Portrait of a Singer Holding a Sheet of Music
Portrait of a Young Artist
Portrait of a Young Lady
Portrait of a Young Man, known as The Actor
Psyche Showing her Sisters her Gifts from Cupid
The Pursuit
R
The Reader
The Reaper
Rest on the Flight into Egypt
Return of the Drove
Rinaldo in the Gardens of Armida
Ruined Temple of Vesta at Tivoli
S
The Sacrifice of the Rose
Sappho Inspired by Cupid, known as The Favourable Inspiration
The See-Saw
A Shaded Avenue (L’Allée ombreuse)
The Shepherdess
The Shirt Withdrawn
Staircase in the Gardens of the Villa d’Este
Stolen Kiss
The Stolen Kiss (L’Enjeu Perdu)
The Storm
The Study
Sultana in Pearls
Sultana on an Ottoman
The Swing 1
The Swing 2
T/V
The Torrent
The Two Sisters
Venus and Cupid (Day)
The Visit to the Nursery
W
The Warrior
The Warrior’s Dream of Love
A Woman from Santa Lucia in Naples
A Woman with a Dog
Y
Young Girl Drawing
Young Girl Holding Two Puppies
Young Girl Kissing a Cat
Young Girl Making Her Dog Dance on Her Bed, wrongly known as La Gimblette
Young Girl Playing with a Dog (La Gimblette)
Young Girl Reading
Young Woman
Young Woman Reading
Young Woman Reading
Marguerite Gérard, Portrait of Jean-Honoré Fragonard,
c. 1787-1791.
Oil on panel, 21.8 x 16.1 cm. Private collection.
1732: Jean-Honoré Fragonard is born in Grasse in the south of France.
1738: Arrives in Paris around this time.
1748-1752: After working as a notary apprentice for a while and having shown a keen interest in drawing, Fragonard is sent to François Boucher’s studio. Boucher refuses to teach him so he is then sent to Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin who trains him by creating copies. He focuses on the paintings of the Masters that he sees in churches and impressed by the quality of his paintings, Boucher finally takes him on as a student.
1752: He wins the Prix de Rome with his painting Jéroboam Sacrificing to the Idols, a competition usually reserved for students of the Academy.
1753-1756: Thanks to the prize, he joins the École Royale des Élèves Protégés under the direction of Carle Van Loo. His many works from this period demonstrate the influence of his masters and their training.
1756-1761: First sojourn in Italy. He studies at the Académie de France in Rome. After a difficult start, he becomes interested in the baroque painters he emulates in his lessons. During this period, he leaves Rome on two occasions. Once to work in Tivoli and another in Naples accompanied by his painter friend, Hubert Robert, and Jean-Claude Richard, abbé de Saint-Non, who will go on to become one of his primary sponsors. The two young artists create many paintings for the abbé de Saint-Non. Upon his return to Paris, Fragonard has established himself as a reputable artist.
1765: His is accepted at the Académie Royale de Peinture due to his painting The High Priest Corésus Sacrificing Himself to Save Calirrhoé which allows him to obtain a studio and accommodation at the Louvre in Paris.
1767: Starting from this year he seldom takes part at the Salon. He turns his back on academic and classical painters to focus on more light-hearted subjects. The majority of the work he produces is commissioned by private clients.
1769: Fragonard marries Marie-Anne Gérard who is also an artist and comes from Grasse. Their first child is born, a daughter named Rosalie.
1770-1773: He creates the series Progress of Love, a collection of decorative panels made to adorn the walls of one of the dining rooms of a pavilion in Louveciennes, the residence of the countess du Berry, a mistress of Louis XV. The panels however are returned to the artist and are highly critiqued by defenders of the emerging neoclassical movement.
1773-1774: Fragonard travels Italy and central Europe.
1780: Birth of his son Alexandre-Évariste, who will go on to become a painter like his father.
1792-1800: Bankrupt and out of favour after the French Revolution, Fragonard paints less and less. The painter Jacques-Louis David uses his influence and gets him a position as a curator in the recently opened museum at the Louvre.
1805: An imperial decree requires all the resident artists, including Fragonard, to leave the Louvre.
1806: He dies following a stroke, largely unnoticed by his contemporaries. His artwork only starts to once again receive recognition in the 19th century.
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The 18th century had no poets; I do not mean rhymers, versifiers, word-spinners; I say poets advisedly. Poetry in the noblest and most profound sense of the term, poetry which is creation through imagery, poetry which is an enchantment, an enhancement of the imagination, an ideal of pensive meditation or smiling delight offered to the human mind, that poetry which lifts up from the earth, with throbbing wings, the spirit of an age, the soul of a people, such poetry was unknown in 18th-century France; her two poets, the only two, were painters: Watteau and Fragonard. |
Blind Man’s Bluffc. 1750-1752 Oil on canvas, 116.8 x 91.4 cm Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo (Ohio) |
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Watteau, a child of the north, of Flanders, was the great love poet, the master of a serene and tender paradise whose art is like the Elysian Fields of passion; he was the elegiac poet amid whose tristful autumn woods, around whose wistful image of pleasure, all the sighing of nature was magically audible; he was the pensieroso of the Regence. Fragonard sang in less elevated strains; he was the poet of the Ars Amatoria of the age. You remember that mischievous, impudent cloud of naked cupids, vanishing into the sky of the Embarquement de Cythère? Their destination was the studio of Fragonard, where they shed the dust from their butterfly wings onto his palette. |
The See-Sawc. 1750-1752 Oil on canvas, 120 x 94.5 cm Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
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Fragonard was the audacious raconteur, the gallant amoroso, pagan and playful, whose wit was Gallic, whose genius was almost Italian, whose bright intelligence was French; he was the creator of ceiling mythologies, of a hundred latitudes of dress, of blushing skies roseate with a reflection from the naked forms of goddesses, of alcoves luminous with the glow of a woman’s nudity. |
Jéroboam Sacrificing to the Idols1752 Oil on canvas, 111.5 x 143.5 cm École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris |
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Psyche Showing her Sisters
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