_Jean Honoré Fragonard_ (French: 1732-1806).
The only poets who seized the spirit of the France of the
eighteenth century were, said the brothers Goncourt, two
painters: Watteau and Fragonard. It was Fragonard, says Sir
Claude Phillips, "whose frank passion, whose irresistible
_élan_ lighted up the decline of the century much as the
imaginativeness of Watteau, his reticence and wistful charm
even in the midst of voluptuousness, lighted up its first
years. He is the Ovid of French painting." He was born at
Grasse near Cannes; and the pupil, in Paris, first of Chardin
and then of Boucher (see 1258, 1090). Having won the Prix de
Rome in 1752, he travelled in Italy, drawing all the sights and
monuments, and studying the old masters. The works of Tiepolo
(see 1192) especially attracted him, and something of their
brilliant, flashing _bravura_ was to be characteristic of
Fragonard himself. Soon after his return to Paris, a picture
of "Coresus and Callirhoë" made a sensation in the Salon, and
inspired what Lord Morley calls "an elaborate but not very
felicitous criticism" by Diderot. Fragonard did not return,
however, to compositions in the classical style; he found
his _métier_, and a highly lucrative practice, in pictures
of sentimental _genre_, audaciously amorous in subject, and
of masterly grace and lightness in execution. Some of his
most famous works in this sort are to be seen in the Wallace
Collection. The beautifully decorative canvases, the "Roman
d'Amour de la Jeunesse," which were exhibited in London in
1898 and are now in Mr. Pierpont Morgan's collection, were a
commission from Madame du Barry, who, however, for reasons
which have not been clearly explained, declined them. From
Mademoiselle Guimard, the dancer, and queen of the _monde
galant_, Fragonard had received a like commission; and the
story is well known of the revenge taken by the painter when
he threw up the task, and transformed his portrait of the lady
as Terpsichore into Tisiphone. In 1794 Fragonard retired for
security from the Terror to Grasse, and on his return to Paris
he found his vogue gone. The Revolution had killed the taste
for his amorous trifles. The reign of the Classical School of
David had begun; and Fragonard died in comparative oblivion and
poverty.
In 1769 Fragonard had married Marie Anne Gérard, the miniature painter;
and to the succeeding years belong, says his biographer (the Baron de
Portalis), many pictures of which the theme is the cradle. Our picture
is of that kind.