Even in his own lifetime, strange to say, Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806) was regarded as somewhat outmoded. By then virtue and historical grandeur were becoming fashionable. Because he remained unconcerned with the hard-edged moral purposefulness that appeared in the work of Jacques-Louis David and his like, Fragonard seemed a remnant of another age. Perspectives have changed since then, however, and we are beginning to view him in a new light: as a singular artist with a highly personal vision, who, both in his conceptions and his brushstroke, anticipated something of the Romantic mood and technique. Indeed, his brushstroke, which had extraordinary vivacity and eloquence, raised the painter's sketch to the status of a completed work (see, for example, his portrait of Diderot). Contemporary art historians therefore quite persuasively argue that Fragonard was, paradoxically enough, ahead of his time when many of his contemporaries were sneering at him for straggling behind.
It took nearly two centuries to bring about this change in outlook. An important exhibition of more than three hundred works by Fragonard organized by the French Museums and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, on view this month at the latter, should do much to establish a new appraisal of the artist's worth.
Scented Vegetation
Not much is really known about the man himself. He was born in Grasse, in the south of France, where his father was a glovemaker. Today, Grasse is an important center of the French perfume industry, and when the Goncourt brothers wrote their study on Fragonard at the turn of the century, they assumed this had always been the case. Their supposition led them to rhapsodize at length about the flowers and scented vegetation of that area, enumerating lemon and orange trees, thyme, sage, rosemary, carnations, lavender, and many other plants that somehow seemed associated with the delicious mood of the artist's paintings. In fact, in the eighteenth century Grasse was a city of tanneries--tanning is a notoriously foul-smelling industry--and the Goncourts' hypothesis that Fragonard's inspiration was drawn from the sensuous scents of Provence seems unlikely.
Young Fragonard was taken to Paris by his parents and put to work as a clerk, but he was soon fired because he spent all his time drawing. Once freed from that onerous occupation he managed to get accepted as an apprentice, first by Chardin, and then by Boucher, who ultimately arranged to have him sent to the French Academy in Rome. "Once you are there," Boucher is said to have told him, "you will be seeing works by Raphael, Michelangelo, and their imitators. But just between you and me, Frago, if you begin taking those people seriously, you're a goner." Fragonard was twenty-four when he reached Rome. He stayed there for four years.
A few beguiling flashes of such conversations as this one between Boucher and his young disciple, recorded by Fragonard's grandson, have come down to us; they offer charming insights into Fragonard's views and attitudes. They are striking in their freshness and authenticity, but they are all the more tantalizing because they are so few. Later generations were all too inclined to see Fragonard, the man, mirrored in his work and imagined him to have been cheery, easy-going, insouciant, and somewhat obsessed with nubile young women. Art historians, however, on the basis of hints and an occasional sentence in other people's
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