A Boy Carried into a Salon
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.We do not know the precise subject of this late sheet, but it seems to relate to the education of children, a topic of growing interest in France at the time. While many of Fragonard’s earlier treatments of similar themes take place in rustic settings, here the surroundings suggest a more privileged milieu. The paleness of the washes reveals the energy and speed with which the artist put down his initial ideas in chalk. He later completed a more finished version of the drawing.
Artwork Details
- Title: A Boy Carried into a Salon
- Artist: Jean Honoré Fragonard (French, Grasse 1732–1806 Paris)
- Date: ca. 1780-85
- Medium: Black chalk, bush and gray wash, incised; verso: faint sketch in black chalk of figures under a tree
- Dimensions: 16 15/16 × 13 7/16 in. (43 × 34.1 cm)
- Classification: Drawings
- Credit Line: The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, Purchased as the gift of the Fellows and with special assistance of Walter Baker, Mme Renée de Becker, Francis Kettaneh, Mrs. Paul Moore, John S. Newberry, Jr., Mr. and Mrs. Carl Stern, Mrs. Herbert N. Straus, and Forsyth Wickes (1955.5)
- Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints