Unlike the majority of Fragonard's red chalk landscapes, made during a summer at Tivoli in 1760, this drawing is a work of the artist's maturity, probably dating to just before his second trip to Italy in 1773–74. Dense deciduous trees recall the forests around Paris rather than the Roman countryside. The unhesitating, even virtuoso, handling suggests that this is an independent work, probably created in the studio from a related plein-air study now in a private collection. A stand of mature trees, bursting with profuse sunlit foliage, guards the shady entrance to the woods. In a characteristic manipulation of scale, Fragonard presents small groupings of elegant figures, half lost in shadow, as restrained echoes of the vigor and fecundity of the overgrown landscape. The dramatic naturalism associated with the Dutch landscapists, especially Jacob van Ruisdael, is here merged with a vision of nature as a welcoming milieu for aristocratic dalliance, a legacy of Watteau's fêtes galantes.
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Signature: Lower center, in red chalk: frago . . .
Jacques Doucet (French), his collection sale, Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, June 5, 1912 (lot 14, repr.); Marius Paulme (per Ananoff); Maurice Fenaille; Mr. and Mrs. François Panafieu (daugher of M. Fenaille and her husband); M. Panafieu's anonymous sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, June 23, 1959 (lot 6); Vendor: Wildenstein & Co., Inc.
Jacques Seligmann et Fils. "Exposition de dessins de Fragonard, Paris, Jacques Seligmann et Fils," 1931.
National Museum of Western Art. "Fragonard," March 18, 1980–May 11, 1980.
Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art. "Fragonard," May 24, 1980–June 29, 1980.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Drawings and Prints: Selections from the Permanent Collection," August 21–November 26, 1995.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Eighteenth-Century French Drawings in New York Collections," February 3–April 25, 1999.
Morgan Library & Museum. "An Independent Draftsman: Fragonard and the French Tradition," October 13, 2006–January 7, 2007.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Philippe de Montebello Years: Curators Celebrate Three Decades of Acquisitions," October 24, 2008–February 1, 2009.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Fragonard: Drawing Triumphant," October 6, 2016–January 8, 2017.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Selections from the Department of Drawings and Prints: Anniversary Highlights," October 8, 2020–January 18, 2021.
Ananoff 1961.336
Exposition d'oeuvres de J.-H. Fragonard Exh. cat., Paris, Musée des Arts Décoratifs. Paris, 1921, cat. no. 198, p. 56.
Georges Wildenstein Expositions d'oeuvres de J.-H. Fragonard.. Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, 1921, cat. no. 198, p. 56.
Expositions de dessins de Fragonard Exh. cat. Paris, Jacques Seligmann. 1931, cat. no. 101, p. 50.
J. Lejeaux Exposition de l'art français au XVIIIe siècle. Copenhagen, Palais de Charlottenborg, 1935, cat. no. 369, p. 113.
Beautés de la Provence. Exh. cat. Galerie Charpentier, Paris, 1947, cat. no. 212.
François Daulte Fragonard. Exh. cat. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bern, Bern, 1954, cat. no. 73, fig. no. pl. xv, p. 38, ill.
François Fosca Les dessins de Fragonard. Paris and Lausanne, 1954, cat. no. 9, p. 53, ill.
Alexandre Ananoff L'oeuvre dessiné de Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806) Catalogue raisonné. Paris, 1961-1970, cat. no. 336, fig. no. 118, pp. 151, vol. 1, ill.
Great Drawings of All Time. Edited by Ira Moskowitz, vol. 3, New York, 1962, cat. no. 699.
Colin Eisler Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian. Oxford, 1977, cat. no. 3, pp. 329-332, ill.
Jean Cailleux, Marianne Roland Michel Sanguines, dessins français du dix-huitième siècle. Ex. cat. Galerie Cailleux, Paris, Paris, 1978, cat. no. 12, p. 37.
Eunice Williams Drawings by Fragonard in North American Collections. Washington and Cambridge, MA, 1979, cat. no. under no. 49, p. 126.
Denys Sutton Fragonard. Ex. cat. Tokyo, 1980, cat. no. 116, n.p., ill.
Perrin Stein "Recent Acquisitions, A Selection: 1995-1996." in The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1996, p. 39, ill.
Alastair Laing "New York French eighteenth-century drawings." Burlington Magazine. vol. 141, no. 1155, London, June 1999, pp. 378, 379.
Perrin Stein, Mary Tavener Holmes Eighteenth-Century French Drawings in New York Collections Exh. cat. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1999, cat. no. 70, pp. 164-166, ill.
C. G. Boerner LLC, New York Old Master Drawings. Exh. cat., 22nd January - 8th February. New York, 2003, cat. no. under no. 32, fig. no. 1, ill.
Perrin Stein, Marie-Anne Dupuy-Vachey, Eunice Williams, Kelsey Brosnan Fragonard--Drawing Triumphant. New York, 2016, cat. no. 49, 164-67, ill.
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