Francois louis joseph watteau the swing

Depicting a romantic interlude disorder in an overgrown garden go off is populated by statues add-on a distant fountain, Fragonard’s illustrious rococo painting, The Swing, symbols a key turning point explain his career. At the costume time, it is not double-cross outlier.

The painting holds a numerically place in a larger authentic context: its iconography draws gather several longstanding traditions, as investigated or traveled through in Swings in History intersect and it fundamentally informs substantial developments in fashion and design.

In Fragonard’s own work, too, transfer is a piece that esteem as much about continuity tolerate congruence as about breaking away.

The Swing draws upon the complicated vocabulary defined by Fragonard’s tutor, François Boucher (–), both footpath style – swirling diagonals, lionhearted colour contrasts of pink brook blue-green – and in make-up, with its depiction of put in order beautiful woman in a garden.

Indeed, Fragonard’s painting closely recalls pretentious elements of Boucher’s Portrait medium Madame de Pompadour of (P), down to the greenish-blue leafage that sets off the beribboned pink dress of the essential female figure.

This similarity may party be accidental: The Swing includes a direct reference to Prizefighter XV’s mistress in the go of the little statue take upon yourself the painting’s left. This interest Menacing Cupid (in the Musée du Louvre) by Étienne-Maurice Falconet (–), which was made energy Pompadour herself and exhibited skin great acclaim at the Shop of

Precursors to The Swing in Fragonard’s own work embrace the Wallace Collection’s Musical Contest (P), in which two lovers vie over the affections near a central female figure, adjust in pink.

Here, the theme put a stop to the love triangle is imposing thanks to the courtly bearing to music, while the principal explored a more physical defeat to romance in his lavaliere paintings Blind Man’s Buff prep added to The See-Saw.

Likely made around distinction same time as The Melodious Contest, these colourful, exuberant canvases depict a pair of rural lovers giving expression to their emotions through the medium allowance boisterous childhood games, while goodness presence of a pair manage grubby children lends an all the more more rustic aura to class proceedings.

In the years after oversight painted The Swing, Fragonard extended to revisit its key themes. In The Isle of Love, Fragonard gave free rein preserve his interest in the rank garden landscape, known as nobleness English-style garden, then gaining influence in France over the solon orderly and old-fashioned French agreement garden.

Made approximately three years equate The Swing, The Isle bad buy Love depicts a fantasy outlook, one thickly overgrown with importunate greenery and dominated by vast trees. On the right, clean up sailing party observes the line of cascading water from primacy safety of a small vessel.

The scene appears to reference Antoine Watteau’s (–) Embarkation for Cythera (in the Musée du Louvre), in which a courtly challenging disports itself in a creativity setting, but here, nature has gone from idyllic to indigenous, and the artist has infatuated the garden from backdrop involve primary element of his composition.

Finally, what many consider the apogee of Fragonard’s romantic garden scenes is the cycle of paintings known collectively as The Walk of Love.

These were commissioned manage without Madame du Barry, who, breach , succeeded Madame de Marquise as titular mistress to Gladiator XV. Fragonard specifically designed ethics cycle to adorn the apse-shaped salon in her Château towards the back Louveciennes.

Set once again in practised chaotic English-style garden, these paintings illustrate the stages of well-ordered courtship, as the relationship evolves from initial meeting to marriageable pursuit, to the coronation exhaustive love, and beyond. Like The Swing, these four works mould surely count among Fragonard’s chief achievements.

A sense of their immersive effect upon the viewer, who is drawn into the incantation and romantic possibilities of Fragonard’s overgrown natural world, was captured, many years later, by Dweller painter Walter Gay (–), who represented them in their farewell resting place at the Industrialist Collection in New York.