Jean Honoré Fragonard

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The work of the French painter Jean Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806) constitutes the final expression of the rococo style. He was famous for the fluid grace and sensuous charm of his paintings and for the virtuosity of his technique.

Jean Honoré Fragonard was born in Grasse on April 5, 1732; about 1738 his family moved to Paris. In 1747-1748 the young Fragonard worked as an apprentice in the studio of Jean Baptiste Chardin. In 1748 Fragonard began studying with François Boucher, and in 1752 Fragonard won the Prix de Rome, a prize awarded by the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture to allow promising artists to study at the French Academy in Rome. Between 1752 and 1756 he studied in Paris at the École des Élèves Protégés, a special school that educated young artists for work in Italy.

Early Career

In 1756 Fragonard left for Rome, and he remained in Italy until 1761. His career at the French Academy in Rome was not particularly successful, and his professors were displeased with him. He turned to drawing and to making landscape sketches, and during 1760 and 1761 he traveled about Italy making numerous romantic drawings of great gardens and the Italian countryside.

After his return to France in 1761 Fragonard occupied himself primarily with painting decorative landscapes; some were based on his Italian drawings, some were derived from the Dutch landscape of the 17th century, and others were in the popular 18th-century "pastoral" taste, that is, imaginary landscapes with shepherds and shepherdesses. These paintings were successful, but he was not accepted as an important professional artist until he was admitted to the Royal Academy in 1765 on the basis of a serious history painting which was not typical of either his taste or his temperament.

Mature Style

The rococo style in painting, which was established in France by Antoine Watteau in the early 18th century and which Fragonard exemplified so brilliantly, was aristocratic in nature, sensuous, intimate, and designed to provide pleasure; stylistically it depended upon soft, luminous colors, complex surfaces, refined textural contrasts, free brushwork, and asymmetrical compositions based upon the interplay of curved lines and masses. Produced for highly sophisticated patrons, rococo painting concentrated on aristocratic diversions, the game of love, decorative portraits, mythological and allegorical themes frequently treated in a playful manner, and idyllic pastoral scenes.

Between 1765 and 1770 Fragonard executed several portraits in which the sitters wear fanciful costumes, and many paintings of an erotic or suggestive nature. These works are characterized by the easy facility of his technique, rapid and delicate brushwork, glowing colors, a silvery or golden tonality of atmosphere, and an exuberant gaiety of mood. An excellent example of his painting from this period, and one which may be regarded as typical of the work usually associated with him, is The Swing. This scene depicts a lady in a pink dress seated on a swing on which she floats through the air, her skirts billowing, while a hidden gentleman observes from a thicket of bushes; the landscape setting emphasizes a bluish, smoky atmosphere, foaming clouds, and foliage sparkling with flickering light.

Pictures like The Swing brought Fragonard harsh criticism from Denis Diderot, a leading philosopher of the Enlightenment. Diderot charged the artist with frivolity and admonished him to have "a little more self-respect." By 1765, indeed, the rococo style was under critical attack, had entered its last phase, and was gradually being replaced by a return to the relative severity of the art of antiquity.

Fragonard, however, was unaffected either by criticism or by the encroaching neoclassicism. His work continued to be in demand, and during the early 1770s he received many commissions both from the royal government and from private persons. One of his most important patrons was the Comtesse du Barry, Louis XV's mistress, who commissioned several decorative paintings for Louveciennes, her château near Paris. The most famous paintings done for her comprise a set of four panels entitled Loves of the Shepherds (now in Frick Collection, New York); they show a pair of elegantly dressed lovers in a parklike setting and have titles which are self-explanatory: Storming the Citadel, The Pursuit, The Declaration of Love, and The Lover Crowned.

Later Career

In 1773 Fragonard made a second trip to Italy, one which lasted for a year. He painted some of his finest landscapes in 1775; the best of these, such as the Fête at Saint-Cloud, have a fantasy quality in which people are dwarfed into insignificance and the compositions are dominated by great fluffy green and golden trees melting into surging clouds. From about 1776 on Fragonard painted young girls reading, allegorical works on the theme of love, portraits, and rather sentimental genre scenes of family life. After about 1784 his production became relatively limited.

Fragonard's work was closely associated with the ancien régime in France, but he managed to make a successful personal adjustment to the French Revolution of 1789. His royal and aristocratic patrons were swept away in the political and social upheaval of the Revolution. He fled to his native Provence in 1790, but in 1791 he was back in Paris. From 1794 to 1797 he helped to create and administer the new National Museum, established by the Revolutionary government in the palace of the Louvre; in 1799 he was dismissed from his museum position. He died in Paris on Aug. 22, 1806.

Further Reading

The most important work on Fragonard is Georges Wildenstein, The Paintings of Fragonard (trans. 1960), a fully illustrated biography with a complete catalog of his work. An interesting evaluation of Fragonard's work within the context of 18th-century painting is presented in Michael Levey, Rococo to Revolution (1966). References to Fragonard can be found in Arno Schönberger and Halldor Soehner, The Rococo Age (1960), a handsomely illustrated work dealing with many facets of 18th-century culture.

Additional Sources

Thuillier, Jacques, Fragonard, Geneva, Switzerland: Skira; New York: Rizzoli, 1987.

Massengale, Jean Montague, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, New York: H.N. Abrams, 1993.

Fragonard, Jean-Honoré (1732-1806). French painter, whose long career reflects the movement of taste between Rococo and Romanticism, though he is best known as the author of elegantly erotic scenes. His most enthusiastic patrons were drawn from the worlds of finance, music, and theatre. In 1771 Fragonard's glamorous series of decorative paintings The Progress of Love for Madame du Barry at Louveciennes were rejected in favour of works in the newly fashionable Neoclassical style by Vien.

[Patsy Campbell]

Fragonard, Jean-Honoré (zhäN-ōnôrā' frägônär'), 1732-1806, French painter. He studied with Chardin, Carle Van Loo, and intensively with Boucher, whose style he assimilated. He won the Prix de Rome and studied in Italy from 1756 to 1761; there he was particularly attentive to the works of Tiepolo. In 1765 he was admitted to the Académie royale for the historical Coresus and Callirrhoë (Louvre), but thereafter he devoted himself to painting polished and delicately erotic scenes of love and gallantry for the court. Characteristic examples are Love's Vow, The Swing (Wallace Coll., London), and the Music Lesson (Louvre). He married and his works became less sensual and more sentimental. Ruined by the Revolution, he retired to Grasse, where he decorated the house of a friend with the panels Roman de l'amour et de la jeunesse, earlier rejected by Mme Du Barry (Frick Coll., New York City), and several other paintings. Fragonard is esteemed for the freedom of his brush technique, the strength and vitality of his portraiture and landscapes, and for his virtuosity in depicting the character of gaiety and charm in the age of Louis XV. Well represented in the Louvre, the Wallace Collection in London, and the Frick Collection and the Metropolitan Museum in New York City, his work can also be seen in the museums of Washington, D.C., Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, and St. Louis.

Bibliography

See the exhibition catalog from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City (1988); studies by D. Wakefield (1976), J.-P. Cuzin (1988), and M. D. Sheriff (1989).

Fragonard, Jean-Honoré (1732–1806), French painter of the rococo period. Fragonard was born in Grasse, a Provençal town near the Mediterranean, where his father was a glove maker or merchant. The family is most likely of Italian origin and was composed primarily of artisans. They appear to have moved to Paris when Fragonard was six, possibly because of a lawsuit, although no documents confirm its nature. According to his grandson, Théophile Fragonard, he was first a notary's clerk, but was dismissed because he drew constantly. His mother took him to see François Boucher (1703–1770), who sent him away because he did not yet know how to paint. Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin (1699–1779), however, appreciated Fragonard's sense of color, accepting him as an apprentice and letting him paint immediately. He worked with Chardin for six months and then returned to Boucher's studio.

Fragonard's first recorded presence in Boucher's studio is 18 May 1753; however, he won the Grand Prix in 1752, so he must have been there as early as 1749 or 1750. Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Fragonard's nineteenth-century biographers, report that even though he had never studied at the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, he was allowed to compete for the Grand Prix as Boucher's pupil. In 1753 Fragonard entered the newly established École Royale des Élèves Protégés (under the direction of Carle Van Loo) where he received training in art theory and technique as well as lessons in history and the liberal arts. He left for the French Academy in Rome in October of 1756, remaining there until 1761.

While Fragonard copied Old Master paintings and ancient sculpture as directed, his landscape drawings made during this period had a greater impact on the future course of his career. He spent a great deal of time sketching the gardens of Tivoli and the Villa d'Este, often alongside Hubert Robert, invited by an important patron of the arts, the abbé de Saint-Non. His drawings of this period are marked by their virtuoso execution and strength of viewpoint. The delicate handling of chalk and dramatic framing effects of his Avenue of Cypress Trees (Musée des Beaux-arts et d'Archeologie, Besançon) is just one example.

In 1765 Fragonard presented his morceau d'agrément (acceptance piece) to the Académie Royale—the much celebrated High Priest Coresus Sacrifices Himself to Save Callirhoë (Musée du Louvre, Paris). Art critics such as Denis Diderot lauded Fragonard as the future strength of the French school; yet they were sorely disappointed at the following salon when he failed to submit history paintings of similar strengths. Various sources claimed that Fragonard had sold out and was working primarily on boudoir paintings. One such work is Happy Hazards of the Swing (1767; Wallace Collection, London), apparently painted on commission for a gentleman of court who wanted his mistress to be the subject of the scene. This delightful easel painting firmly positioned Fragonard as the leading artist of the last generation of rococo painters, heir to Boucher and Antoine Watteau.

For most of his career, Fragonard worked for private patrons who could pay him well. He demonstrated a tremendous capacity to change his style at will and worked in all the genres with equal facility. Many of his paintings were cabinet pictures, but he also received commissions for large-scale decorative cycles, although not all of these pleased his patrons. Most famously, the Louveciennes panels painted for Louis XV's mistress, Madame du Barry, were rejected and replaced by a series painted by Joseph-Marie Vien, who worked in a more neoclassical style. These paintings (now in the Frick Collection, New York) have been the subject of numerous and often conflicting analyses. Critics and scholars are in agreement, however, in their assessment of Fragonard's talents with the brush. The bravura that marks his so-called fantasy portraits has long been considered evidence of artistic genius, and such works were no doubt executed—reportedly in under an hour—to give this impression to the beholder.

Fragonard's impact on the late rococo lies in his reinterpretation of the fête galante and pastoral imagery of the previous two generations. His interest in picturesque effects took rococo landscape in new directions based largely on principles of opposition and escape. Some scholars have credited this change to Fragonard's study of nature during a second journey to Italy in 1773 and 1774, traveling in the company Pierre-Jacques-Onésyme Bergeret de Grancourt, a fermier général (tax farmer) whom he had known for ten years. He made drawings exclusively during this trip, which are characterized by his use of bistre wash and which show his fascination with light effects. It is this interest in using light to convey atmosphere and emotion that altered his approach to painting.

Fragonard's late works respond to the polish of neoclassicism. They are more controlled, less physically energized, but profoundly emotive. The tenor of these works, such as The Bolt (c. 1778; Louvre), relies on the tension of line, refined surface textures, and strong use of chiaroscuro. This is the period in which Fragonard began to work with his niece, Marguerite Gerard. Considerable confusion exists over the authorship of late works like The Stolen Kiss (Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg), but recent research suggests that there was a genuine collaboration between master and student, each taking up parts of the canvas. They also executed numerous prints together.

The young Jacques-Louis David took a great deal of interest in Fragonard; his early works were clearly influenced by the compositions and techniques of the rococo master. During the 1790s, when revolutionary events all but prevented Fragonard from continuing to paint, David helped to secure positions for him as a curator and administrator. While commissions and sales were essentially nonexistent in these turbulent years, Fragonard was not excluded from working within the existing institutions of art. He played an essential role in founding what is now the Louvre. Between 1792 and 1797, he was one of six members of the Commission du Muséum Central, a body that oversaw every aspect of the new museum. In 1805 Fragonard was given a pension for life by the state, although he died less than a year later, on 22 August 1806.

The rococo fell out of favor during the first half of the nineteenth century. Not until the Goncourt brothers completed their biographies of important eighteenth-century artists would attention turn once again to the painterly magnificence of Fragonard's works. The impressionists, particularly Pierre-Auguste Renoir, were among those most influenced by his use of color and his technique. Subjects that we most strongly associate with Fragonard and the rococo, like women on swings, were also revived at that time.

Bibliography

Ashton, Dore. Fragonard in the Universe of Painting. Washington, D.C., 1988.

Cuzin, Jean Pierre. Jean-Honoré Fragonard: Life and Work. New York, 1988.

Rosenberg, Pierre. Fragonard. Exh. cat. New York, 1988.

Sheriff, Mary D. Fragonard: Art and Eroticism. Chicago and London, 1990.

Wildenstein, Georges. The Paintings of Fragonard. London, 1960. Also published in French, 1960.

—JENNIFER D. MILAM