Jean-Honoré Fragonard Grasse 1732 - 1806 Paris

Possibly Jean Claude Richard, abbé de Saint-Non;
Pierre-Marie Gault de Saint-Germain (1754-1842; bears inscription in pen and ink, verso: P.M. Gault. de St. Germain/N^o 224. ; and in pencil: Vente 19, 20 Mars 1839; also, illegible  inscription: Vente...1958...M... );
sale, London, Sotheby's, 21 November 1974, lot 111;
Herman Schickman Gallery, New York, from whom purchased, 24 February 1978

Richmond, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Three Masters of Landscape: Fragonard, Robert and Boucher, 1981, pp. 16-17, no. 2, reproduced

We are grateful to Eunice Williams for informing us that she believes the dating of circa 1759 suggested for this drawing in the Richmond exhibition catalogue is much too early.  Dr. Williams believes that the treatment of the foliage and details of the tree trunk are in fact characteristic of Fragonard's more mature style, and that the drawing should instead be dated circa 1775-80.  Fragonard's travels in Italy during the second half of the 1750s greatly influenced his landscape style for the rest of his career, but the impressive compositions and vibrant lighting of his Italian drawings gradually gave way, after his return, to a mistier, more tranquil approach to the landscape, which is more what we see in the present drawing.  A comparable drawing of the same period, also depicting A Gathering at the Edge of a Wood, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.¹

The Richmond catalogue also associated the blue mounting with drawings from the collection of the Abbé de Saint-Non, now in the British Museum and in the library at Besançon, although the type of blue mount found here was in fact fairly widely used at this time, and the suggestion that this drawing formerly belonged to Saint-Non must remain unproven.  The inscription on the verso of the old mount does, however, give some concrete early provenance:  Pierre-Marie Gault de Saint-Germain (1754-1842) was a successful artist, and also an art historian, whose book Les Trois siècles de la peinture en France was published in 1808.

 

1. A. Ananoff, L'oeuvre dessiné de Fragonard, vol. I, Paris 1962, no. 336, reproduced fig. 118