Old Master Drawings

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Lot 96
  • 96

Jean-Honoré Fragonard Grasse 1732 - 1806 Paris

Estimate
35,000 - 55,000 GBP
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Description

  • Jean-Honoré Fragonard
  • view in the garden of prince doria, at pegli near genoa
  • inscribed in graphite by the Abbé de Saint-Non along the lower margin: Vue dans les Jardins de Pegli appartenant au Prince Doria, à 6 mille de Gesnes
  • black chalk

Provenance

Jean Claude Richard, abbé de Saint-Non;
H. Lacroix, 1889;
Mme la comtesse de Béarn-Béhague, her sale, London, Sotheby's, 29 June 1926, lot 76;
collection of M.L., sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 4 November 1970, lot 75;
purchased, London, Christie's, 19 March 1975, lot 137

 

Exhibited

Washington, National Gallery of Art, et al., Drawings by Fragonard in North American Collections, 1978-79, cat. no. 13, reproduced;
Richmond, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Three Masters of Landscape, Fragonard, Robert and Boucher, 1981, p. 25, no. 12, reproduced

Literature

R. de Portalis, Fragonard, Sa vie et son oeuvre, Paris 1889, p. 316;
A. Ananoff, Les dessins de Jean-Honoré Fragonard, vol. II, no. 937 fig. 250; vol. IV, no. 2156;
Pierre Rosenberg, Panopticon Italiano, Rome 1986, p. 422, no. 356, reproduced

Catalogue Note

This drawing was made on Fragonard and Saint-Non's famous Italian tour, as they returned north to France, and can be dated quite precisely to September 1761.  Of the many drawings that Fragonard made during the course of this trip, the great majority are copies after works of art by other artists, and landscape subjects such as this are relatively rare.  Eunice Williams wrote about it as follows in the catalogue of her Fragonard exhibition: 'In spite of its informal, even intimate, character and its rapid, sketchy execution, the drawing is carefully composed to conform with the style and format of drawings made on this trip'.1


1. See Exhibited, 1978-79, loc. cit.