French Rococo Era Painter, 1732-1806 was a French painter and printmaker whose late Rococo manner was distinguished by remarkable facility, exuberance, and hedonism. One of the most prolific artists active in the last decades of the Ancien Regime, Fragonard produced more than 550 paintings , of which only five are dated. Among his most popular works are genre paintings conveying an atmosphere of intimacy and veiled eroticism. He was born at Grasse, Alpes-Maritimes, the son of François Fragonard, a glover, and Françoise Petit. He was articled to a Paris notary when his father's circumstances became strained through unsuccessful speculations, but showed such talent and inclination for art that he was taken at the age of eighteen to François Boucher, who, recognizing the youth's rare gifts but disinclined to waste his time with one so inexperienced, sent him to Chardin's atelier. Fragonard studied for six months under the great luminist, then returned more fully equipped to Boucher, whose style he soon acquired so completely that the master entrusted him with the execution of replicas of his paintings. Though not yet a pupil of the Academy, Fragonard gained the Prix de Rome in 1752 with a painting of "Jeroboam Sacrificing to the Golden Calf", but before proceeding to Rome he continued to study for three years under Charles-Andre van Loo. In the year preceding his departure he painted the "Christ washing the Feet of the Apostles" now at Grasse cathedral. On September 17, 1756, he took up his abode at the French Academy in Rome, then presided over by Charles-Joseph Natoire. While at Rome, Fragonard contracted a friendship with a fellow painter, Hubert Robert. In 1760, they toured Italy together, executing numerous sketches of local scenery. It was in these romantic gardens, with their fountains, grottos, temples and terraces, that Fragonard conceived the dreams which he was subsequently to render in his art. He also learned to admire the masters of the Dutch and Flemish schools (Rubens, Hals, Rembrandt, Ruisdael), imitating their loose and vigorous brushstrokes. Added to this influence was the deep impression made upon his mind by the florid sumptuousness of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, whose works he had an opportunity to study in Venice before he returned to Paris in 1761. In 1765 his "Coresus et Callirhoe" secured his admission to the Academy. It was made the subject of a pompous (though not wholly serious) eulogy by Diderot, and was bought by the king, who had it reproduced at the Gobelins factory. Hitherto Fragonard had hesitated between religious, classic and other subjects; but now the demand of the wealthy art patrons of Louis XV's pleasure-loving and licentious court turned him definitely towards those scenes of love and voluptuousness with which his name will ever be associated, and which are only made acceptable by the tender beauty of his color and the virtuosity of his facile brushwork;   Related Paintings of Jean-Honore Fragonard :. | The Meeting | Cephale et Procris | Blindekuhspiel | The Love Letter | Love Letters |
Related Artists:
Karl Kaspar Pitz
painted Portrait of a cleric a book in his right hand, by a marble bust in before 1795
Adriaen Frans Boudewijns
Adriaan Frans Boudewyns, not Anton Frans (Bauduins, or Baudouin), (3 October 1644 - 3 December 1719) was a Flemish Baroque landscape painter. He was born at Brussels and learned to paint under a landscape painter named Ignatius van der Stock, and was received into the Guild there in 1665. He then travelled to Paris in 1666 and studied under A. F. van der Meulen for three years, and whose daughter Barbara he married 12 January 1670. In 1674 his wife died and in 1681 he moved back to Brussels where he married again. According to Houbraken he was a good landscape painter who encourage Gerard Hoet to stay in Brussels for 8 months in the 1680s. His son Frans Boudewijns (1682-1767) also became a successful painter. He was ruined in the bombardment of Brussels in 1695. Adriaen Fransz. Boudewijns, Adriaen Frans Boudewyns, Adriaen Frans Baudewijns, Adriaen Frans Baudewyns, Anton Frans Baudouin, Adriaen Frans Bauduins, Adrien François Bauduins, Monogrammist AFB
William Bell Scott
1811-1890 Brother of David Scott. He trained at the Trustees' Academy in Edinburgh and was taught engraving by his father. He saw the family print workshop as 'the lineal descendant of Albert Derer's factory in Nernberg'; he was later to own a fine collection of D?rer's prints and write a book about him (1870). In 1837 he went to London, where he was impressed by 'a new and interesting school of historical and loosely speaking, inventive and illustrative painters'. This encouraged him to leave landscape painting for the time being and become a history painter. Like his brother, he entered a cartoon for the Westminster Hall competition in 1842: the Free North Britons Surprising the Roman Wall between the Tyne and Solway; this too was unsuccessful. In 1843, discouraged by lack of patronage in London, he accepted the Mastership of the Government School of Design at Newcastle upon Tyne, where he stayed for 20 years, visiting London each summer.