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The First Riding Lesson

ca. 1775-78
Not on view
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.
Playful scenes featuring the instruction of small children were a favored subject of Fragonard’s in the mid-1770s. He often treated the theme in the form of large-scale drawings built up of broad strokes of pale golden brown wash. The dog here is a patient stand-in for a horse, as young parents give their child a first "riding lesson." The figures are not, as earlier scholars believed, portraits of Fragonard’s family members but rather generalized types who appear again and again in his domestic scenes.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: The First Riding Lesson
  • Artist: Jean Honoré Fragonard (French, Grasse 1732–1806 Paris)
  • Date: ca. 1775-78
  • Medium: Brush and brown wash over black chalk underdrawing
  • Dimensions: 13 11/16 × 17 3/4 in. (34.8 × 45.1 cm)
  • Classification: Drawings
  • Credit Line: Brooklyn Museum, New York, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Alastair B. Martin, the Guennol Collection, 1957 (57.189)
  • Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints