Jean-Honoré Fragonard

Jean-Honoré Fragonard (French: [ʒɑ̃ ɔnɔʁe fʁaɡɔnaʁ]; 5 April 1732^[1]^[2] – 22 August 1806) was a French painter and printmaker whose late Rococo manner was distinguished by remarkable facility, exuberance, and hedonism. One of the most prolific artists active in the last decades of the Ancien Régime, Fragonard produced more than 550 paintings (not counting drawings and etchings), of which only five are dated. Among his most popular works are genre paintings conveying an atmosphere of intimacy and veiled eroticism.

Jean-Honoré Fragonard

(1732-04-05)5 April 1732

Grasse, France

22 August 1806(1806-08-22) (aged 74)

Paris, France

French Academy in Rome

Painting, drawing, etching

The Swing, A Young Girl Reading, The Bolt

Rococo

Marie-Anne Fragonard (née Gérard)

(m. 1768)

2, including Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard

Prix de Rome

References within art and literature[edit]

Fragonard's art finds itself imbedded within other writer's stories, as within the text The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald there is a portion in the story in which Peter L. Hays in the article "Fitzgerald and Fragonard"^[17] states that Fitzgerald alludes to Fragonard's paintings both implied and explicitly. The first art piece Fitzgerald alludes to is The Swing, as the character Nick within The Great Gatsby as he describes what he sees as women swinging in Versailles while a man looks up the skirt of a woman. The is the explicit description that Fitzgerald gives the readers as a clue that alludes to Jean-Honoré Fragonard's painting The Swing. Hays also claims that F. Scott Fitzgerald is alluding to a second painting of Fragonard which is his rendering of Etienne Maurice Falconet's "Cupid the Admonisher" in which Cupid is seen with his finger on his lips referencing the clandestine nature of what the character Nick in The Great Gatsby is looking at. This is because the man that is seen in Fragonard's The Swing has a perfect view of the young woman's underside of her dress.

Octave Mirbeau's short story The Little Summer-House in the collective book "French Decadent Tales" by Stephen Romer directly references Fragonard's art pieces when an unnamed character is taken into a bathroom and is stuck between two emotions disapproval or pleasure.

Fragonard's art also finds itself within not only stories, but poems as well. The poem The Lamentation of the Old Pensioner by William Butler Yeats, in which he uses the description of a broken tree and a woman that turns her face as another allusion to Fragonard's The Swing once again,^[18] as the branch the woman uses to swing on is broken and facing the viewer.

Fragonard's art finds itself in a poem passage The Waste Land written by T.S Eliot which visually depicts the "carvéd dolphin" surmounted by winged cupids in Fragonard’s Progress of Love: The Pursuit.

Fragonard's also finds itself being referenced in a novel written by Milan Kundera Slowness which talks about Fragonards paintings Progress of Love, which shows the progress of love, from pursuing, love letters, and crowning the lover, which shows the slowness of pursuing a lover. There have also been many artistic installations inspired Fragonard's work, some including actual recreations of his paintings come to life. The Swing (After Fragonard) is a 2001 exhibit that physically recreates Fragonard's The Swing, creating a real life exhibit of the famous scene of the girl swinging. Artist Yinka Shonibare CBE puts his own spin on Fragonard's work, such as using a mannequin wearing a dress made of frilly African print fabric, or choosing to not give the mannequin a head or face. He also keeps the background a neutral white with wooden flooring, which contrasts the bright colors of the dress, and the many flowers he plants at the base of the exhibit. He keeps the flying shoe as seen in the actual painting, as well as the suggestive and upbeat pose of a girl swinging midair, ensuring that the sculpture still closely reflects Fragonard's The Swing, even with the different renditions of Shonibare. Artist Cy Twombly also references Fragonard in his 1928 painting "Untitled." He takes elements of Fragonard's work and reinterprets them in his own abstract and expressive style. "Untitled" is an abstract piece made up of loose and energetic lines that portray motion and vigor. The pallet of Twombly's painting is close to the famous work of Fragonard in that it uses light and airy colors, while representing a sort of sexual and provocative energy.

Jean-Honoré Fragonard

Jeroboam Offering Sacrifice for the Idol, 1752, Beaux-Arts de Paris, Paris

Blind Man's Bluff, 1750–1752, Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio

The See-Saw, 1750–1752, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid

The Birth of Venus, 1753–1755, Musée Grobet-Labadié, Marseille

The Grape Gatherer, 1754–1755, Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit, Michigan

The Musical Contest, 1754–55, Wallace Collection, London

Aurora Triumphing over Night, c. 1755–56, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston^[19]

Coresus Sacrificing himself to Save Callirhoe, 1765, Louvre, Paris

Callirhoe's Sacrifice. Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid. (ricordo from the large Coresus and Callirhoë)^[20]

The Bathers, c. 1765, Louvre, Paris

Inspiration, 1769, Louvre, Paris

Portrait of a Man, the so-called Denis Diderot, 1769, Louvre, Paris

Portrait of François-Henri d'Harcourt, c. 1769, Accademia Carrara di Belle Arti di Bergamo, Bergamo

The Love Letter, 1770, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York^[21]

La Gimblette, c. 1770, Alte Pinakothek, Munich

The Secret Meeting, 1771, (former collection of Madame Du Barry), Frick Collection, New York

The Visit to the Nursery, c. 1775, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

A Young Girl Reading, c. 1776, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

The Two Sisters, after 1778, Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York^[22]

The Stolen Kiss, late 1780s, Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg

The Beautiful Servant, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm

The Woman With A Dog,^[23] after 1760, found in The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Les Débuts du Modèle Or Model's First Lesson, 1770, found in Musée Jacquemart-André

Le Chat angora (c.1783-1785), Wallraf-Richartz Museum.

Archived 3 March 2020 at the Wayback Machine – Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA, from 28 October 2007 to 21 January 2008.

Consuming Passion : Fragonard's Allegories of Love

– Jacquemart-André Museum, Paris, from 3 October 2007 to 13 January 2008.

Fragonard

Archived 29 November 2009 at the Wayback Machine – Caixa Forum, Barcelona, from 10 November 2006 to 11 February 2007.

Fragonard. Origines et influences. De Rembrandt au XXIe siècle

Les Fragonard de Besançon, , from 8 December 2006 to 2 April 2007: Official website

Musée des Beaux-Arts et d'archéologie de Besançon

Jean-Honoré Fragonard, dessins du Louvre, , Paris, from 3 December 2003 to 8 March 2004.

Musée du Louvre

Fragonard amoureux, , Paris, from 16 September 2015 to 24 January 2016: Official website

Musée du Luxembourg

– Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, from 17 September 2015 to 4 January 2016.

Fragonard’s Enterprise: The Artist and the Literature of Travel

Honoré Fragonard

History of painting

Western painting

Jeroboam Sacrificing to Idols

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the : Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Fragonard, Jean-Honoré". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 10 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 772–773.

public domain

(1881–1882). "Fragonard". L'Art du XVIIIe siècle. Vol. III. G. Charpentier. p. 241. ISBN 978-2-35548-008-9. Archived from the original on 19 November 2008. Retrieved 10 May 2009.

Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

Eva-Gesine Baur (2007). Rococo. Taschen. 978-3-8228-5306-1.

ISBN

Jean Montague Massengale (1993). Jean-Honore Fragonard. Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 0-8109-3313-6.

ISBN

(1988). Fragonard in the Universe of Painting. Smithsonian Institution Press. ISBN 0-87474-208-0.

Dore Ashton

(1990). Fragonard: Art and Eroticism. The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-75273-9.

Mary Sheriff

Jean-Pierre Cuzin (1988). Jean-Honore Fragonard: Life and Work. Complete Catalogue of the Oil Paintings. Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 0-8109-0949-9.

ISBN

David Wakefield (1976). Fragonard. London: Oresko Books. 0-905368-01-0.

ISBN

(1960). The Paintings of Fragonard. Phaidon.

Georges Wildenstein

Martha Richler (1997). "18th century". . Scala Publishers Ltd. ISBN 1-85759-187-9.

National Gallery of Art Washington A World of Art

Percival, Melissa (2017) [2012]. . London, New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-4094-0137-7 – via Google Books.

Fragonard and the Fantasy Figure: Painting the Imagination

George R. Collins, Beatrice Farwell, Jane G. Mahler and Margaretta Salinger, "Jean-Honoré Fragonard" in Encyclopedia of Painting: Painters and Paintings of the World from Prehistoric Times to the Present Day, Myers S. Bernard (ed), Crown, 1955. pp182–83.

Jean-Honoré Fragonard