Jean-Honoré Fragonard

Edouard Ayard, Lyon;
acquired in 1900 by Georges Dormeuil (L.1146a),
thence by descent to the present owners

Paris, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Pavillon de Marsan, Exposition de dessins de Fragonard, 1921, no. 179;
Paris, Palais National des Arts, Chefs-d'oeuvre de l'Art français, 1937, no. 533, reproduced vol. II, pl. 144

R. Portalis, Fragonard, sa vie, son oeuvre, Paris 1889, p. 307;
S. de Ricci, Les dessins français, Paris 1937, pl. XXIV; 
J.-L. Vaudoyer, 'Les Peintres de Rome,' Le Jardin des Arts, May 1957, p. 393, reproduced; 
A. Ananoff, L'Oeuvre dessiné de Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806), vol. II, Paris 1963, no. 858, vol. IV, Paris 1970, p. 380, fig. 723 (always as a view of the gardens of the Villa d'Este);
P. Rosenberg, Fragonard, exhib. cat., Paris, Grand Palais, and New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1987-88, p. 112, under no. 34 (related works)

Laid down on (probably 19th-century) backing. Wash very slightly sunk and spread in places, notably in figures of washerwomen, lower left. Paper slightly yellowed. Minor loss, top edge, towards left. Three minor surface scratches, one top edge, left of centre, and two more slightly left of centre, towards bottom. One or two very light foxing marks and some slight surface dirt, but general condition very good and strong. Sold in an elaborate early 19th-century carved and gilded frame with swags and cartouche to top.
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Having won the coveted Prix de Rome in 1752, Fragonard travelled to Italy in 1755, remaining there for five and half years.  During this time, he was deeply impressed both by the works of art that he saw there, and – like so many northern artists before him – by the beauty of the Italian landscape and the magic of the light that falls on it.  With its grand composition and towering central pine trees, this bolder and darker of the two Dormeuil drawings (see also lot 59) seems to encapsulate Fragonard’s rapture at what he saw in the parks and countryside surrounding Rome during this initial visit to Italy. 

Fragonard prepared for this large and ambitious composition by folding the sheet down the centre, enabling him to organise and balance the various elements in the composition.  He then seems to have reinforced the vertical fold with a light chalk line, and throughout the composition, the light black chalk underdrawing is evident.  It has been suggested that he may even have made these rapid underdrawings while still in Italy, to be used later as the basis for finished drawings.  More commonly, though, Fragonard's subsequent repetitions and versions of compositions dating from his Italian journey are based on red chalk drawings made on the spot, or on counterproofs taken from those drawings worked up in pen and ink and wash, like the notable view of The Avenue of Cypresses at the Villa d'Este, in the Woodner Collection at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, which derives from the great red chalk drawing in Besançon.¹  

The handling of pen and wash in the Woodner drawing is very similar to what we see here, with distinctive, systematic pen hatching in certain areas of foliage contrasting with a combination of fine dots and broad dark washes elsewhere.  Another good comparison, particularly in the rather 'pointillist' style, is the reversed version of the same Villa d'Este view, now in the Albertina.²  Both of these views of the Villa d'Este, though based on an original drawing of 1760, are generally considered to date from circa 1765, a dating that would also seem appropriate for the present drawing.

Traditionally, this splendid landscape was itself also described as depicting the park of the Villa d'Este, but although the general disposition of the scene is broadly reminiscent of that location, the drawing does not in fact represent any known view.  Like so many of Fragonard's landscapes, it is a recreation, from the artist's imagination, of the spirit of the Italian landscape, rather than an image of a particular, specific place.  In its grandeur and monumentality it does, though, stand among the finest of Fragonard's landscape drawings, and hardly any comparable works of this type today remain in private hands.

We are very grateful to Eunice Williams and other scholars for their valuable help in the cataloguing of this drawing.

1.  M. Morgan Grasselli, Renaissance to Revolution, French Drawings from the National Gallery of Art, 1500-1800, exhib. cat., Washington, National Gallery of Art, 2009-10, no. 86
2.  Inv. 12.735; Rosenberg, op. cit., no. 31