Jean-Honoré Fragonard

D. G. de Arozarena, South America and Paris (L.109),

his sale, 29 May 1861, lot 44;

Hippolyte Walferdin (1795-1880),

his sale, Paris, Drouot, 12-16 April 1880, lot 242,

with Schuster and Halevy;

Camille Groult (1837-1908), Paris,

by descent Pierre Bordeaux-Groult (1916–2007), Paris;

sale, London, Christie’s, 13 December 1984, lot 135;

Pierre Pfeiffer, London;

with Bernheimer, Munich,

from whom purchased, 2001

Munich, Bernheimer, in cooperation with Galerie Arnoldie-Livie, The Pfeiffer Collection of Old Master Drawings, 2001, pp. 68-9, reproduced

A. Ananoff, L’Oeuvre dessiné de Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806), Paris 1961-70, vol. I, p. 85, no. 144, vol. IV, fig. 691

The four heads, arranged elegantly by Fragonard to cover the whole sheet, seem to suggest a theme such as a debate among scholars.

The smooth and fluent application of washes places this drawing in the period from the 1760s to the 1770s — a chapter in the artist's career when Fragonard seem to be mastering a personal style of drawing, executed mostly with brush and wash over black chalk. As observed by Eunice Williams 'He reached a level of ease and freedom that surpassed mere facility'.¹

The head of a bearded man on the left recalls a model which appears frequently in Fragonard's paintings from the 1760s for which Pierre Rosenberg has stressed the influence of Rembrandt.² There is on the other hand a connection to the fanciful heads of Orientals painted by Giambattista Tiepolo in 1755 and the one published by his son Giandomenico Tiepolo, after the death of his father in 1770, in the famous etchings, the Raccolta di Teste.

The present sheet has been dated to circa 1774-1775.

^1.E. Williams, Drawings by Fragonard in North American Collections, Washington 1978, p. 110

^2.P. Rosenberg, Fragonard, exhib.cat., Paris, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais and New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1987-88, Paris 1987, p. 204