Interactive Powerpoint_How to Master effective communication
Fragonard billet doux
1. HDA Fragonard : Le billet doux
source : http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/110000762
2. Jean-Honoré Nicolas Fragonard (né le 5 avril 1732 à Grasse et mort le 22 août 1811 à Paris) est
un des principaux peintres français du XVIIIe siècle. Il fut peintre d'histoires, de genre et de
paysages.
Date:
early 1770s
Medium:
Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
32 3/4 x 26 3/8 in. (83.2 x 67
cm)
Classification:
Paintings
Credit Line:
The Jules Bache Collection,
1949
Accession Number:
49.7.49
In the work of Fragonard, by comparison, for example, with that of Boucher, finish is a relative term.
Here, over a brown tone, Fragonard shapes the composition in darker shades of brown, drawing and modeling
with the tip of the brush and with strokes of varying thickness. Color and white are confined to passages under
strong light toward the center of the canvas: the young woman's powdered face, her dress and cap, writing surface
and stool, flowers and dog. This famous canvas from the early 1770s should be read not as a portrait but as a
genre scene.
This is a painting without an early history that simply appeared in a mid-nineteenth-century Paris
exhibition, as a loan from a private collector, with the title The Love Letter. Occasionally it has been identified as
a portrait but probably it is not, as Fragonard makes no attempt to describe the features of an individual but
instead, working at speed, presents a scenario. A young woman in a boudoir, seated on a stool at her writing desk
before an oculus window, has addressed a card to a gentleman and inserts it into a bouquet of flowers wrapped in
a paper cone. The message cannot be read with any degree of certainty but may have been: to monsieur my
cavalier . . . . The theatrical aspect of the scene is emphasized by the focused light as well as by the way the
intimate view is surrounded by curtains. The lady looks over her shoulder, as if at someone entering. Her hair is
dressed smoothly under a muslin cap with pink ribbons. She wears lace cuffs painted in a flurry of white strokes
with a robe, or rather a coat, à la française, which is pleated at the back just below the neckline before falling into
soft loose folds around her. Her white face is heavily made up. Close beside her is a white dog with fluffy, silky
ears.The painting must date to the 1770s. A lack of finish is characteristic of several works of the same moment.
Michael Fried [see Ref. 1996] proposed that Édouard Manet (1832–1883) might have seen the picture in 1860: it
shares certain details of the setting with Manet’s famous nude Olympia (Musée d’Orsay, Paris).
![Jean-Honoré Nicolas Fragonard (né le 5 avril 1732 à Grasse et mort le 22 août 1811 à Paris) est
un des principaux peintres français du XVIIIe siècle. Il fut peintre d'histoires, de genre et de
paysages.
Date:
early 1770s
Medium:
Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
32 3/4 x 26 3/8 in. (83.2 x 67
cm)
Classification:
Paintings
Credit Line:
The Jules Bache Collection,
1949
Accession Number:
49.7.49
In the work of Fragonard, by comparison, for example, with that of Boucher, finish is a relative term.
Here, over a brown tone, Fragonard shapes the composition in darker shades of brown, drawing and modeling
with the tip of the brush and with strokes of varying thickness. Color and white are confined to passages under
strong light toward the center of the canvas: the young woman's powdered face, her dress and cap, writing surface
and stool, flowers and dog. This famous canvas from the early 1770s should be read not as a portrait but as a
genre scene.
This is a painting without an early history that simply appeared in a mid-nineteenth-century Paris
exhibition, as a loan from a private collector, with the title The Love Letter. Occasionally it has been identified as
a portrait but probably it is not, as Fragonard makes no attempt to describe the features of an individual but
instead, working at speed, presents a scenario. A young woman in a boudoir, seated on a stool at her writing desk
before an oculus window, has addressed a card to a gentleman and inserts it into a bouquet of flowers wrapped in
a paper cone. The message cannot be read with any degree of certainty but may have been: to monsieur my
cavalier . . . . The theatrical aspect of the scene is emphasized by the focused light as well as by the way the
intimate view is surrounded by curtains. The lady looks over her shoulder, as if at someone entering. Her hair is
dressed smoothly under a muslin cap with pink ribbons. She wears lace cuffs painted in a flurry of white strokes
with a robe, or rather a coat, à la française, which is pleated at the back just below the neckline before falling into
soft loose folds around her. Her white face is heavily made up. Close beside her is a white dog with fluffy, silky
ears.The painting must date to the 1770s. A lack of finish is characteristic of several works of the same moment.
Michael Fried [see Ref. 1996] proposed that Édouard Manet (1832–1883) might have seen the picture in 1860: it
shares certain details of the setting with Manet’s famous nude Olympia (Musée d’Orsay, Paris).](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)