Jean-Honoré Fragonard

Possibly Sale, Paris, 8 July 1793, lot 64 (sold with a pendant);
sale, Tours, Hôtel des Ventes, 17 June 1973, lot 64, reproduced on the cover;
Private Collection

Tokyo, The National Museum of Western Art, and Kyoto, Municipal Museum, Fragonard, 1980, no. 117, also cited under no. 50, reproduced

Possibly A. Ananoff, L'Oeuvre dessiné de Jean-Honoré Fragonard, vol. IV, Paris 1970, p. 159, no. 2439

Partially laid down. Colors have slightly faded, especially the blue in the sky. Small cluster of fox marks located above Cupid's head. Sold in carved and gilded frame.
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Cupid as a Jester, cavorting amidst pairs of lovebirds and waving the fool’s traditional staff, is a subject that recurs regularly in Fragonard’s work.  In the famous series of fourteen canvases on the theme of The Progress of Love, now in the Frick Collection, New York, we find this subject included as one of a set of four overdoors depicting cupids in various guises. The original four paintings in the series were commissioned from the artist in 1770-71 by the Comtesse de Barry for the Château de Louveciennes, but these overdoors are rather later works, executed circa 1790-91.¹  Elsewhere, three other paintings are known that were made as pendants to representations of ‘L’amour en sentenelle’, and at least three other lost examples are recorded in early sale catalogues.²   A similar pair of gouaches is also recorded, which were engraved individually, in 1777 and 1779, and a drawing in wash and watercolor was formerly in the Zarine collection, Paris.³

Perhaps surprisingly, the present drawing is the only one of the various known images by Fragonard of L’Amour folie in which cupid is shown looking more or less directly out toward the viewer, and for that reason, as well as the free spontaneity of the technique, the drawing may well be one of his first treatments of this appealing subject.  

¹ For the full story of the cycle, see: C.B. Bailey, Fragonard’s Progress of Love, at the Frick Collection, New York 2011

² G. Wildenstein, The Paintings of Fragonard, London 1960, nos. 317-327

³ Ananoff, op. cit., no. 1621