Jean-Honoré Fragonard (b. 5 April 1732, Grasse, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France - d. 22 August 1806, Paris, First French Empire) was a French painter, representative of the rococo style of the second half of the 18th century. However, as he created in all the styles of the era, he cannot be perfectly placed in a particular style.
Fragonard was a painter of subtle and frivolous love scenes in the genre of "fêtes galantes", tackling daring themes that do not, however, detract from an understanding of the innovative character of the artist's creation. When he paints portraits, he impresses with his extraordinary skill, and his paintings with historical themes amaze the representatives of academic neoclassicism.
Jean-Honoré Fragonard's Life and Works
Jean-Honoré Fragonard was born on 5 April 1732 in the small town of Grasse in the south of France. The name "Fragonard" is of Italian origin, one of the painter's ancestors being from Milan. At the age of 6, in 1738, the future painter's family settled in Paris. After a short apprenticeship in a notary's office, where he spent most of his time drawing, his parents decided to introduce him to the studio of one of the famous painters of the time.
He was introduced to the fundamentals of drawing and painting by Jean Siméon Chardin, and was then admitted to the studio of François Boucher, one of the most highly regarded painters in Paris at the time. Boucher entrusts Fragonard with the preparation of tapestry cartoons for the Gobelins manufactory and supports him in the competition for the "Grand Prix" offered by the Académie des Beaux-Arts.
Fragonard obtains the "Prix de Rome" in 1752 and enters the royal school of painting under Carle Van Loo. Four years later he arrived in Rome where, in addition to the works required by the Academy, he made numerous copies of works by Italian masters in the city's churches and palaces, as well as paintings after nature.
In the summer of 1761 he travelled to several cities in northern Italy, including Siena, Florence, Bologna and Venice, accompanied by his patron, the Abbé de Saint-Non.
On his return to France, Fragonard was already an accomplished painter. In 1765, he succeeded in passing the first stage that separated him from the title of member of the Académie des Beaux Arts by presenting his painting Corésus et Callirhoé, a large-scale composition in which one can feel the effort and desire to paint a historical picture according to the established academic rules.
However, bored with waiting for definitive membership and the "academic" style, he gave up an official career and turned to a frivolous and erotic genre with a great acceptance by the general public, which also ensured his material independence. On 17 June 1769 he married Marie-Anne Gérard, the daughter of a perfume manufacturer in Grasse.
The painting The Cradle (1767) is a replica of an earlier composition (1752), full of charm, in which, in a seemingly innocent play, disturbing sensory impulses creep in, a work created when Fragonard was working in Boucher's studio. This time, in the midst of abundant, fresh vegetation, a young woman incites the man hidden among the bushes at the foot of the statue of Cupid by swinging her swing, revealing the nakedness of her calves.
While the Impressionists were greatly fascinated by the Cradle, the composition Women Bathing (1765) was to influence all 19th-century modern French painting. It is a dizzying, impetuous whirlwind in which the artist indulges in colour, enlivening the female figures and painting the abundant vegetation around them.
The Latch, a late work (ca. 1780) by Fragonard, expressively portrays the artist's intention to treat the untimely desire for love not as a frivolous motif but as a dramatic scene.
The lovers' desire is expressed with great intensity, resulting also from the cross-sectional construction of the painting, similar to the construction of historical paintings, which creates a vibrant and lively tension characteristic of Fragonard's work.
At the beginning of the seventies, he was mainly engaged in decorative works, receiving commissions for decorative paintings in the Louvre Palace and the Belevue Palace. At the request of King Louis XV's favourite, Madame du Barry, he executed the large-scale cycle of paintings "Les Progrès de l'amour dans le coeur d'une jeune fille" for the Louvenciennes residence.
The cycle consists of 14 paintings, divided into three groups: six love scenes, four allegories of love and four decorative paintings. However, the paintings were not accepted by the king because they did not fit in with the neo-classical architectural style of the pavilion.
Fragonard later transported them to Grasse and installed them in the salon of the residence of a cousin of his. They can now be admired in the Fragonard Room in the Frick Collections Archived September 28, 2007, at the Wayback Machine, New York.
In portraits, Fragonard's palette centers around white, to which are added tones of tan, gold, deep red, and dark green. The colour is so diluted that in places it becomes transparent. When the paste is thick, you can see the brush marks after each vigorous stroke.
Among the best known is a portrait of Denis Diderot[citation needed], one of the greatest representatives of the Enlightenment, painted in the same vibrant technique.
Inspiration, or Portrait of a Young Artist, one of Fragonard's most beautiful and vivid portraits, shows an artist at the moment of inspiration, supposedly the philosopher and poet Jacques-André Naugeon (1738-1810). Much more elaborate is the Portrait of Madame de Guimard, a dancer known as much for her talent and suppleness as for her number of lovers.
The last twenty years of the artist's life
The solid reputation he enjoys as a painter of frivolous scenes, landscape painter, portraitist and decorator guarantees him many commissions, Fragonard hires apprentices, becomes rich. In the autumn of 1773, with his wife Anne-Marie, he travels to Italy.
In December they arrive in Rome, where they spend the winter in the Villa Medicis. With the arrival of spring, they go to Naples. They return to Paris at a leisurely pace, the journey being interrupted by frequent stopovers. After Florence and Venice, the travellers head for Vienna.
They also stop in Prague, Dresden, Frankfurt and Mannheim. In mid-September 1774 they return to Paris. Fragonard begins to introduce his son Alexandre-Evariste Fragonard to the art of painting. The young man would later become Louis David's apprentice, and in 1793 he took part in the Salon Officiel exhibition for the first time.
After the outbreak of the French Revolution (1789), Fragonard left Paris and in January 1790 he and his family moved to Grasse. He returned to Paris in 1791. Protected by his friend, the painter Louis David, a member of the "Convention", he joined the "Commune des Arts", which had been founded in 1793 in place of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture.
He becomes a member of the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers for applied sciences and is in charge of managing and organising the art collections of the future Louvre museum.
From 1797 he takes charge of sending works of art to a new museum to be set up in Versailles. During this period he painted only a few portraits and a series of drawings, illustrations for Jean de La Fontaine's fables.
In 1806 he had to leave the Louvre and moved to a house in the gardens of the Palais-Royal. On 22 August he goes out shopping, it is very hot, he goes into a shop and orders an ice cream. He starts to eat and dies suddenly, probably of a stroke. He is buried in the old Montmartre cemetery.
Jean-Honoré Fragonard's influence
Fragonard had an undeniable influence on many painters of his time, but he had no real followers. Of all his disciples, only his sister-in-law, Marguerite Gérard, and son, Alexandre-Evariste Fragonard, followed in his footsteps.
Fragonard's late works were to have a definite influence on one of the greatest painters of the time, Pierre-Paul Prud'hon (1758-1823), who preserved the delicacy of the rococo style, which was no longer fashionable, and was considered a precursor of symbolism.
Fragonard had several frequent admirers among 19th-century painters. Pierre-Auguste Renoir in particular would appreciate his painting.