Paintings Drawings Sculptures 2016 - Jean Luc Baroni

Jean-Honoré Fragonard
Grasse 1732 - 1806 Paris
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A Seated Male Academy crowned with a Laurel Wreath, in a Voluminous Coat with one Arm Raised
Red chalk. Laid down on an old blue mount, inscribed in pen and brown ink: par Fragonard.
510 x 340 mm (20 1 /8 x 13 3 /8 in.)
Provenance: Sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 31 March
1914, lot 30, 200fr. to Leclerc ‘Etude probablement
pour la figure principale de la composition du maître:
‘A la gloire de Franklin’; Georges Bourgarel, sale, Paris,
15-16 June 1922, lot 86, where acquired by Sacha
Guitry, Paris; thence by descent to Lana Marconi
Guitry, sale, Paris 24 November 1972, lot 37 (as
French School); Private collection.
Ehibited: Tokyo, The National Museum of Western
Art and Kyoto, Municipal Museum, Fragonard, 1980,
cat.159.
Literature: S. Guitry, Cent merveilles, Paris 1954,
ill. P.130; G. Wildenstein, The paintings of Fragonard,
Paris 1960, p.27, no.2; A. Ananoff, L’œuvre dessiné
de Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806), catalogue
raisonné, Paris 1961-70, vol. I, p.117, cat.245, vol.
II, under Addenda et Corrigenda, p.303, cat.245;
exhibition catalogue, Pierre Rosenberg, Paris, Grand
Palais and New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Fragonard, 1988, under cat.12.
Natoire also specified that the exercises should only last
an hour as the models would need to rest 2 . After some
initial disapproval, Natoire came to appreciate the
academy studies of his protégé, Fragonard, certain of
which had a second life on their return to France, being
used as models for engravings to illustrate the chapter
on dessein in Diderot’s Encyclopaedie 3 .
Fragonard arrived in Rome in December 1756; he
remained there for four years but in the first year he
was struck by a profound crisis of confidence despite
having been warned by Boucher that he would be
‘a lost man’ if he dwelt too seriously on the works of
Raphael, Michelangelo and their followers 4 . We are
told that he fell into an indolent state, unable to work
for months after seeing the beauty of Raphael’s work
The grand scale of this impressive drawing demonstrates
something of Fragonard’s ambitions as a young artist.
While the sheet is entirely in keeping with the restricted
academic tradition, which demanded the study of
single, posed figures it has an amiability and liveliness of
expression and style redolent of his inventive technique
and independent character. In size and conception, the
drawing compares extremely closely with the few known
academy studies from Fragonard’s early career, mostly
of figures in ecclesiastical dress 1 , considered to have
been made whilst he was a pensionnaire at the French
Academy in Rome. Pierre Rosenberg, in discussing
the dating of these drawings in the early pages of the
catalogue for his monographic exhibition of 1988 cites
an annotation on one of the associated drawings, now at
Orléans, which dates the sheet to Fragonard’s stay at the
Palazzo Mancini, then the Académie de France. He also
reports that Natoire, the director of the Academy, had
revived the practice of encouraging the academicians
to draw during the holidays .. draped figures, of various
kinds and different dress, but above all in ecclesiastical
type habits which produce the most excellent folds ...
1. Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Study for Drapery: Standing Bishop,
Stockholm, Nationalmuseum.
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