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 :. | Selbstportrat, Oval | Souvenir | Education is Everything | Blindbock | The Lover Crowned |
Related Artists:
Otto Greiner
painted Prometheus in 1909
David Cox
David Cox [English Painter, 1783-1859] English painter. After taking drawing lessons from Joseph Barber (1757/8-1811) in Birmingham, Cox worked briefly as an apprentice to a painter of lockets and snuff-boxes named Fieldler. This was followed about 1800 by a longer period painting scenery for the New Theatre, Birmingham. On the promise of similar employment at Astley's Amphitheatre in Lambeth, Cox travelled to London in 1804, but when this came to nothing he decided to make his name as a watercolour painter. He began exhibiting at the Royal Academy in 1805 and from 1809 until its demise in 1812 with the Associated Artists in Water-Colours, of which he became both member and president in 1810. He was elected an Associate of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours in 1812 and within a month had advanced to full membership.
Jan van Scorel
Dutch 1495-1562 Jan Van Scorel Galleries Jan van Scorel (1495, Schoorl - December 6, 1562, Utrecht) was an influential Dutch painter credited with the introduction of High Italian Renaissance art to the Netherlands. It is not known whether he began his studies under Jan Gossaert in Utrecht or with Jacob Cornelisz in Amsterdam, but it certain that it was the master painters he would meet later in his life who would have the greatest effect on his technique. Van Scorel began traveling through Europe in his early twenties, first heading to Nuremberg and then to Austria. It was there, in 1520, that he completed his first representative work, the "Sippenaltar" in St. Martin's church in the village of Obervellach. Giorgione served as a considerable influence on van Scorel during a tenure in Venice. Upon leaving Venice, van Scorel passed through Rome and made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. His experiences in Jerusalem are depicted in many of his later works. In 1521, van Scorel returned to Rome where he met Pope Adrian VI, who appointed him painter to the Vatican. He himself sat for a portrait. Van Scorel enjoyed the influence of Michelangelo and Raphael, and succeeded Raphael as Keeper of the Belvedere. Upon his return to the Netherlands in 1524, he settled in Haarlem where he began a successful career as a painter and a teacher. Van Scorel was a very educated man and skilled as an engineer and an architect, as well as an artist. He was also multi-lingual, no doubt as a result of his travels. Considered to be the leading Netherlandish Romanist, van Scorel moved to Ghent for painting contracts before moving to Utrecht for the same reason, where he died in 1562, leaving behind a wealth of portraits and altarpieces. Though many of his works fell victim to the Iconoclasm in 1566, some still remain and can be seen primarily at museums in the Netherlands.