Jean-Honoré Fragonard Grasse 1732 - 1806 Paris

M. de Bièvres, his sale, 10 March 1790, lot 23 (with another drawing);
Camille Groult, Paris;
Collection de M. X.... Paris (presumably a descendent of Camille  Groult who died in 1908);
Herman Shickman, New York
Private Collection, USA

Fragonard's wash drawings always have a freedom and exuberance, and this example has a particular dramatic intensity because of its subject.  The energetic wash is here used to describe water pouring around the seated figure of a River God, and to define the shadowy serpent that writhes around and under his legs. Ananoff lists two other drawings of river gods by Fragonard, but this is the most powerful.  One of the others, later in date and quite different in style, was included in the 1987-88 Fragonard exhibition (private collection; see Rosenberg, loc. cit.). 

Though broadly reminiscent of classical sculpture, this drawing does not in fact derive from any known antique protoype, and seems rather to have been inspired and influenced by a variety of 16th-18th century Italian works, to which Fragonard was exposed after his arrival in Rome in 1755.  Eunice Williams, who has studied this drawing from a photograph, has kindly pointed out that the figure "follows in the bold traditions of Bernini in his Fountain of the Four Rivers in the Piazza Navona, Rome (1640s-50s)...which Fragonard would have seen as a mature artist during his second trip to Italy...(1772-1773)".  Williams also observes that Fragonard is known to have admired and made copies after the Tiepolos, and could also have been influenced in the present composition by works such as the etching by Giandomenico after Giambattista, depicting a River God, which can be related to a drawing datable to circa 1745-50 (see Aldo Rizzi, L'Opera grafica dei Tiepolo. Le acqueforti, Venice, no. 124, reproduced; and George Knox, Tiepolo Drawings in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London 1960, p. 65, nos 129-30 recto and verso). 

Eunice Williams' general description of the drawing captures perfectly its exceptional qualities:  "The nude figure is seated astride the rocks much like a king on a throne, the arms open in a gesture of power but also perhaps malevolence: the two-fold potential and dangers of water (its power to insure life as well as to destroy). Typical attributes of river gods: a snake at the lower left , and the oar, held in place by the god's left leg.  Water seems to explode around the figure, suggesting a fountain as much as a river.  Fragonard' s chalk and brush also seem to explode onto the paper to imply the powerful movement of water.  [The] technique is characteristic of the mature Fragonard in the 1770s, after his second trip to Italy".