Jean-Honore Fragonard
Jean-Honoré Fragonard (April 5, 1732 – August 22, 1806) is known as one of France's most unique painters and printmakers of the eighteenth century. Fragonard was one of the favorite creators at the courts of both Louis XV and Louis XVI. His Rococo style was characterized by a fluid technique, exuberance, spontanteity, and hedonism. Painting over 550 works (only 5 of which are dated), not including his various drawings and etchings, Fragonard's canvases were often delicately colored scenes of gardens, nature, and romance.
His works were prolific in the last decades of the ancien régime, and Fragonard's portrayal of intimacy and eroticism were among the popular works of the time period. His imagination, creativity, and brilliance are evident in each work he painted.
Biography
Jean-Honore Fragonard was born on April 5, 1732, in the French region of Provence. His home, for the first part of his life, was located in the small town of Grasse, Alpes-Maritimes. Fragonard's father was a glover, and a poor one at that. It became necessary, after several failed business speculations, for Fragonard to be sent away from home as an apprentice to a Parisian lawyer and notary in 1747. During his brief time as an apprentice, Fragonard displayed such a talent and appetite for drawing and art that the lawyer suggested he be apprenticed under an artist.
At the age of eighteen, Fragonard was taken to the well-known painter, François Boucher. Boucher was able to recognize the potential within Fragonard, but he was not willing to teach him the basic principles. Thus, he sent Fragonard away to gain some experience. He began studying the elements of painting under Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin, where he learned the basics of mixing colors and forming shapes and dimensions. After six intense months learning under the great luminist, Fragaonard again returned to Boucher. Finally, Boucher was prevailed upon to accept him as a pupil, and it was under his tutelage that Fragonard's distict style and methods began to take shape.
whose style he soon acquired so completely that the master entrusted him with the execution of replicas of his paintings.
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. In the year preceding his departure he painted the "Christ washing the Feet of the Apostles" now at Grasse cathedral. On September 17, 1756, he took up his abode at the French Academy in Rome, then presided over by Charles-Joseph Natoire.
While at Rome, Fragonard contracted a friendship with a fellow painter, Hubert Robert. In 1760, they toured Italy together, executing numerous sketches of local scenery. It was in these romantic gardens, with their fountains, grottos, temples and terraces, that Fragonard conceived the dreams which he was subsequently to render in his art. He also learned to admire the masters of the Dutch and Flemish schools (Rubens, Hals, Rembrandt, Ruisdael), imitating their loose and vigorous brushstrokes. Added to this influence was the deep impression made upon his mind by the florid sumptuousness of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, whose works he had an opportunity to study in Venice before he returned to Paris in 1761.
In 1765 his "Coresus et Callirhoe" secured his admission to the Academy. It was made the subject of a pompous (though not wholly serious) eulogy by Diderot, and was bought by the king, who had it reproduced at the Gobelins factory. Hitherto Fragonard had hesitated between religious, classic and other subjects; but now the demand of the wealthy art patrons of Louis XV's pleasure-loving and licentious court turned him definitely towards those scenes of love and voluptuousness with which his name will ever be associated, and which are only made acceptable by the tender beauty of his color and the virtuosity of his facile brushwork; such works include the Serment d'amour (Love Vow), Le Verrou (The Bolt), La Culbute (The Tumble), La Chemise enlevée (The Shirt Withdrawn), and The Swing (Wallace collection), and his decorations for the apartments of Mme du Barry and the dancer Madeleine Guimard.
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 favourite models. In 1773-74 he again went to Italy, returning through Prague and Germany. Back in Paris, the artist fell in love with his wife's 14-year-old sister. The French Revolution deprived Fragonard of his private patrons: they were either guillotined or exiled. 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 panels known as the Roman d'amour de la jeunesse, originally painted for Château du Barry. He returned to Paris early in the ninteenth century, where he died in 1806, almost completely forgotten.
Reputation
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.[1] Subsequent reevaluation has confirmed his position among the all-time masters of French painting. The influence of Fragonard's handling of local colour and expressive, confident brushstroke on the Impressionists (particularly his grand niece, Berthe Morisot, and Renoir) cannot be overestimated.
See also
- History of painting
- Western painting
Confusion
For the monk painter, see Fra Angelico.
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- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
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