French Rococo Era Painter, 1732-1806 was a French painter and printmaker whose late Rococo manner was distinguished by remarkable facility, exuberance, and hedonism. One of the most prolific artists active in the last decades of the Ancien Regime, Fragonard produced more than 550 paintings , of which only five are dated. Among his most popular works are genre paintings conveying an atmosphere of intimacy and veiled eroticism. He was born at Grasse, Alpes-Maritimes, the son of François Fragonard, a glover, and Françoise Petit. He was articled to a Paris notary when his father's circumstances became strained through unsuccessful speculations, but showed such talent and inclination for art that he was taken at the age of eighteen to François Boucher, who, recognizing the youth's rare gifts but disinclined to waste his time with one so inexperienced, sent him to Chardin's atelier. Fragonard studied for six months under the great luminist, then returned more fully equipped to Boucher, whose style he soon acquired so completely that the master entrusted him with the execution of replicas of his paintings. Though not yet 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-Andre 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;   Related Paintings of Jean-Honore Fragonard :. | The Jester | The Meeting | The Lover Crowned | Portrait of Denis Diderot | The Bathers |
Related Artists:
Per Wilhelm Cedergren
painted Winter picture from Dalaro Skans in 1856
William Marlow
(1740 - 14 January 1813) was a British landscape and marine painter and etcher. Marlow was born in Southwark in London, and studied for 5 years under the marine painter Samuel Scott, and also at the St. Martin's Lane Academy, London. He became a member of the Incorporated Society of Artists, and from 1762 to 1764 contributed to their exhibitions in Spring Gardens. He was employed in painting views of country houses. From 1765 to 1768, on the advice of the Duchess of Northumberland, he travelled in France and Italy. On his return to Britain he renewed his contributions to the Society of Artists, and took up residence in Leicester Square, London - he was made a Fellow of the Society in 1771. In 1788 he moved to Twickenham, and started to exhibit at the Royal Academy, showing works regularly until 1796, and again, for the last time, in 1807, when he exhibited Twickenham Ferry by Moonlight. Marlow died in Twickenham on 14 January 1813.
Johannes Lingelbach
(Frankfurt, 1622 - Amsterdam - 1674), was a Dutch Golden Age painter, associated with the second generation of Bambocciate, a group of genre painters working in Rome from 1625 - 1700.