Jean-Honore Fragonard
1732 -1806
Jean-Honoré Fragonard was a French painter and printmaker whose late Rococo manner was distinguished by remarkable facility, exuberance, and hedonism. Fragonard produced more than 550 paintings, of which only five are dated. Among his most popular works are genre paintings conveying the atmosphere of intimacy and veiled eroticism.
For half a century or more he was so completely ignored that Lübke in his History of Art (1873) omits the very mention of his name. Subsequent reevaluation has confirmed his position among the all-time masters of French painting. The influence of Fragonard's handling of local color and expressive, confident brushstroke on the Impressionists (particularly his grand niece, Berthe Morisot, and Renoir) cannot be overestimated.
He was born at Grasse, Alpes-Maritimes as the son of a Glover. He showed such talent and inclination for art that François Boucher, who, recognizing the youth's rare gifts sent him to Chardin's atelier. Fragonard studied for six months under the great luminist, and then returned more fully equipped to Boucher.
Though not a pupil of the Academy, Fragonard gained the Prix de Rome in 1752 with a painting of "Jeroboam Sacrificing to the Golden Calf", but before proceeding to Rome he continued to study for three years under Charles-André van Loo. On September 17, 1756, he took up his abode at the French Academy in Rome, and then presided over by Charles-Joseph Natoire.
While at Rome, Fragonard toured Italy, executing numerous sketches of local scenery. In these romantic gardens, with their fountains, grottos, temples and terraces Fragonard conceived the dreams which he was subsequently to render in his art. He learned to admire the masters of the Dutch and Flemish schools (Rubens, Hals, Rembrandt, Ruisdael), imitating their loose and vigorous brushstrokes. He was deeply impressed by the florid sumptuousness of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo.
In 1765 his "Coresus et Callirhoe" secured his admission to the Academy. Fragonard had hesitated between religious, classic and other subjects; but the demand of the wealthy art patrons of Louis XV's pleasure-loving court turned him definitely towards those scenes of love and voluptuousness with which his name will ever be associated. A lukewarm response to these series of ambitious works induced Fragonard to abandon Rococo and to experiment with Neoclassicism.
He had married in 1769 and had a son, who became one of his favorite models. The French Revolution deprived Fragonard of his private patrons. The neglected painter deemed it prudent to leave Paris in 1793 and found shelter in the house of his friend Maubert at Grasse, which he decorated with the series of decorative. He returned to Paris early in the nineteenth century, where he died in 1806, almost completely forgotten.
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