Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Reading in the Kitchen
Jean Honoré Fragonard French
Not on view
Like many of Fragonard’s scenes of country life, this one takes place in an ambiguous rustic interior, part stone, part wood. Figures of all ages gather around a hearth, where a young woman stirs a pot over a fire as smoke and steam billow up. At left stands a young woman of a more elevated station who has presumably come to read to the assembled group; they are most likely illiterate. With one or two exceptions, they listen with rapt attention.
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