JEAN-HONORÉ FRAGONARD | GIRL WITH A BIRDCAGE SEATED IN A LANDSCAPE

(Probably) commissioned as part of the decoration for the Hôtel de Mortemart-Rochechouart;

(Probably) Baron Roger Portalis, Paris:

With Eugene Kraemer, by 1900 (according to E.M. Hodgkins);

From whom acquired by Charles Wertheimer, Paris, in 1900 and in his collection until at least 1907;

E.M. Hodgkins, Paris;

Possibly with Knoedler, New York;

S.G. Archibald, New York;

Mrs. Harrison Williams, New York;

Her sale, New York, Parke-Bernet Galleries, 22-23 May 1952, lot 231;

There acquired by H. Taylor Curtis;

Anonymous sale, Los Angeles, Abell Auction Company, 18 September 2016, lot 251;

There acquired.

J.J. Forster, French Art from Watteau to Prud’hon, London, 1907, III, reproduced p. 113, pl. XLV (as property of Mr. C.J. Wertheimer);

K. Hanson, "Jean-Honoré Fragonard's lost 'Little Pilgrim,'" Burlington Magazine, vol. 155, no. 1322, May 2013, p. 313. 

This charming painting can probably be connected to Fragonard's series of works probably commissioned for the Hôtel de Mortemart-Rochechouart at 27, rue Saint-Guillaume in Paris, now the École libre de Sciences Politiques. Though the details of the original commission and early history continue to elude scholars, four of the larger panels from the series, each of which depicts a rural character (The Gardener, The Reaper, The Shepherdess, and Woman Gathering Grapes), remain together and are now housed at the Detroit Institute of Arts.¹ Three other possible overdoors have recently been reattributed to Fragonard and associated with the series, including the Little Pilgrim at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.² The works date from Fragonard's formative years, 1754-55, just before he moved from Paris to Rome. Indeed, the influence of François Boucher, in whose workshop he had studied from 1750, is so evident in this group of paintings that many were previously attributed to him, rather than Fragonard. 

Girl with a birdcage would have been a large overdoor when the series was originally installed. Though the present painting remained with the other panels in the collection of the art dealer Eugene Kraemer, he sold the overdoor privately to the prominent collecter Charles Wertheimer in 1900; the panels were subsequently included in Kraemer's 1907 auction. 

1. Inv. nos. 71.390-3, see https://www.dia.org/art/collection/object/shepherdess-45276 

2. https://www.collection.imamuseum.org/artwork/41147 For further discussion on these overdoors, see K. Hanson under Literature.