'The swing' by Jean-Honoré Fragonard: new hypotheses

The Burlington Magazine, 2015

appeared at public auction. The work in question showed three rows of 'thumbnail-sized' sketches, eighteen small drawings in total (Fig.7 on p.242). Seventeen were annotated with scribbled names, fourteen were identifiable with one or another of the artist's 'fantasy figures', and the remaining four suggested still-unknown works of a similar type. 1 For scholars of eighteenth-century French art, the discovery was momentous. Broad re-evaluations of the meaning and parameters of the 'fantasy figure' series were called for and undertaken. 2 Public re-interpretation of individual paintings followed, most prominently in the pages of Le Figaro where it was declared that the figure formerly considered to be Denis Diderot (1713-84) had suffered from a long-term case of mistaken identity. 3 At the National Gallery of Art, Washington, the revelations of the drawing prompted a two-year investigation of Young girl reading, conducted as a collaborative effort of the curatorial, conservation and science divisions (Fig.17). Before 2012, the relationship between Young girl reading and the 'fantasy figure' ensemble was frustratingly ambiguous. 4 Powerful evidence supported a connection between the two. The dimensions of the Gallery's picture, 81 by 65 cm., are identical, or nearly so, to those of the more firmly established works in the group. 5 Its palette, dominated by deep yellows, mauves and roses, recalls the colouring of Portrait of M. de La Bretèche (Fig.18); its energetic, gestural brushwork reappears throughout the canvases; its costume, with its elaborate collar, evokes the elegant dress à l'espagnole of the other models. Yet if these dramatic, overtly posed representations were portraits-a popular interpretation even before 2012, as demonstrated by the erroneous assignation of titular names such as Diderot-Young girl reading was unlikely to be of the same vein. 6 While the other models appear conscious of the viewer's gaze, the This article would not have seen the light without Marie-Anne Dupuy-Vachey who generously shared her conclusions on Fragonard's related drawing. We are grateful to

RIHA Journal, 2024

Starting from the presence of a painting by Aimé Morot among the slide collection of Charles Lang Freer, a collection otherwise devoted to modern American painters and Asian art, the essay traces back the origin of this slide to the collection of Ernest Fenollosa and untangles the documentation on how his slides found their home in the Freer Archives in Washington, D.C. Fenollosa's use of this slide to juxtapose ancient Japanese art and modern French painting is a starting point for reflecting on the role that the presence-or absence-of images played in printed texts as opposed to lectures, and how that in turn fueled the tendency towards stylistic comparisons. Lastly, the position of lantern slides as a tool that was once indispensable to art history, and now, in the digital era, becomes a historical and material object to be studied as such, allows us to reflect on one of the many epistemological shifts that we face as art historians.

Eighteenth-Century Studies 19:3, 1986

The painting of the nineteenth socialist "prophet," Jean Journet, by Gustave Courbet had been lost for one hundred years until it was unexpectedly discovered in one of the caches of Hildebrand Gurlitt in November 2015. This paper explores the significance of this work of art as the "keystone" to an important series of works for the Salon of 1850, explaining the role of this work in constructing a political meaning for the audience of the post-revolutionary era. Now that the work has been found, it will be possible to discuss the painting and its meanings fully.

Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 2008

Art History, 1978

In 1887 Whistler and William Merritt Chase visited the International Exhibition in Antwerp together. From Pennell's account we learn that the older American was teasing the younger one. In the presence of Whistler, Chase was rather embarrassed by his own admiration for Bastien Lepage, of whose works there were several on show. With characteristic 'wickedness' Whistler seized upon the situation to declare: Til say one word, Chase. .. the one word-school.' 1 In this single utterance Whistler conveyed his reservations about the artist whose work, three years after his death, was regarded with such enthusiasm by the younger generation. Painters of Whistler's age drew their sustenance from an art with a longer pedigree and would consequently advise their followers not to be seduced. We find that Pissarro père, on more than one occasion, exhorted Pissarro fils to disown what he regarded as Bastien's souless skill, while in the accounts of painting in the '80s Degas' mocking title 'the Bouguereau of the Naturalists' is frequently quoted. 2 And yet we often forget that there were many artists and critics of the day, led perhaps by Zola, for whom Bastien's concentration on métier gave his work an edge over that of the group represented by Degas and Pissarro. Many would have agreed with Zola that, 'Sa supériorité sur les peintres impressionnistes se résume dans ceci, qu'il sait réaliser ses impressions.... Il a donc gardé leur souffle, leur méthode analy tique, mais il a porté son attention sur l'expression et la perfection du métier.' 3 Such divided opinions were even more marked in Britain where the dispute over Bastien's work still lingered in criticism at the end of the '90s. By 1910 many British painters, conscious of reputation, were more likely to admit to the influence of universally accepted masters. More recently, historians who have looked at those artists' work have found it more tantalizing to search for the traces of a very positive personality, like Monet, for instance, than to reveal the effects of someone who was himself carrying stylistic and iconographie ingredients from others. The questions raised by the work of many young artists of the 1880s have to do with the fact that the style of their chosen master was in a sense 'soluble'. What he conveyed was not totally of himself but depended to a varying degree on his reading of others as it were at a third remove. Similarly one has

Nineteenth-Century Contexts, 2014

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