Taking a swing at young Fragonard
Those who’ve nodded through 18th-century art history courses are probably familiar with Fragonard’s most famous painting, “The Swing.”
An ingenue’s boyfriend pushes her in a garden swing as her frilly pink petticoats ruffle and unfurl. Unbeknownst to her suitor, a hidden interloper lies beneath the action, ready to catch a dainty pump propelled by her delicate foot.
The overwrought garden scene is emblematic of the florid Rococo style, which traded in mannered dandies, fops, comely belles and discreet eroticism. Though it’s a carefree image, it’s the work of a highly trained artist with an unshakable work ethic.
One of the most popular artists of the late 18th-century, Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806) took some time to arrive at such highly mannered expression.
“Fragonard’s Enterprise: The Artist and Literature of Travel,” at the Norton Simon Museum, is instructive for viewers who only know the painter of pre-French Revolution follies.
It’s a detailed view of the young draftsman who would become one of the most prolific of the late-period Rococo painters. Sixty black chalk drawings sample Fragonard’s studies of Italian work from the churches and palazzos.
While studying at the French Academy, the young Fragonard met his first patron, Jean-Claude Richard de Saint-Non.
A publisher of books celebrating the Grand Tour of Italy, Saint-Non’s travelogues contained his own dilettante etchings and aquatints of Italian classical art. They traveled to Italy several times and Fragonard’s studies served as the basis for the prints.
The Grand Tours were a way for Fragonard to study and learn from the work of masters: de Ribera in Naples; Canaletto, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese and Tiepolo in Venice; Giordano in Padua; the Uffizi Palace in Florence.
The drawings are small-scale and deftly executed. Throughout, Fragonard shows quick and accurate facility, an eloquent line and regard for classical composition.
Curator Gloria Williams has had a long career in museums. She began at LACMA and moved to the Drawings Department at the Getty before arriving at the Norton Simon in 1987.
“The Fragonard chalk drawings have long been on my mind,” she says from her office. “I did an earlier show of how he learned from other artists. But after a while I thought that a show of the original application of these works — travel literature — was in order.”
The show matches an accompanying photograph of each original that corresponds to the drawings. While faithful in his recordings, Fragonard took liberties with his sources.
“Saint-Non could have commissioned a more accurate copyist,” Williams notes. “But there’s quite a lot of play in the interpretations. There must have been tremendous trust between the two.”
Though quite intimate with these drawings, Williams has not been able to answer one question concerning them. “I’ve long wondered,” she posits, “that while they’re fairly literal, whether or not he loosened up through the course of his travel. That’s too hard to know. Remember — he studied for three years as preparation for Italy. By the way,” she adds, “it was 254 years ago this weekend that Fragonard was in Piacenza.”
An accompanying display traces the ownership of the Fragonard studies over the centuries. Though there were three previous caretakers before they came to Norton Simon, the last owner had to sell a number of the drawings, which number 300 in all. Many are scattered in museums around the world.
“I think the studies informed his later paintings,” she maintains. “The movement within the composition, the passion and the emotion.”
Had he stuck with copying the masters and painting historical scenes, Fragonard would have been assured a seat in the French Academy. He could have lived out his life turning out paintings for the bourgeoisie. Instead, his last years were spent in poverty and obscurity.
“He didn’t know how it would end,” Williams says, “but he sealed his fate when he gave us those wonderful paintings of the playful lovers.”
What: “Fragonard’s Enterprise: The Artist and the Literature of Travel”
Where: Norton Simon Museum, 411 W. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena.
When: through Jan. 4, 2016; closed Tuesdays.
Contact: (626) 449-6840, nortonsimon.org
--
KIRK SILSBEE writes about jazz and culture for Marquee.