Sanguine
37,5x55,5 inch
Sanguine
37,5x55,5 inch
Biography
Jean-Honoré Fragonard is the son of François Fragonard, a glove-maker, and Françoise Petit. After the death, at ten months, of his little brother Joseph, he remains an only child. He left his hometown at the age of six to settle with his family in Paris, where most of his career took place.
A career in history painting then seemed to him all mapped out. He thus entered the Royal School of Protected Students for three years, then directed by the painter Carle Van Loo. Fragonard made his Grand Tour and left in 1756 for the French Academy in Rome in the company of his friend Hubert Robert (another painter who won the Prix de Rome) and the architect Victor Louis.
He resided there until April 1761 and was particularly influenced by the painter Giambattista Tiepolo and the baroque style of Pierre de Cortona, but he exhausted himself pastiche of the great masters in a still academic style. Jean-Claude Richard de Saint-Non becomes, at this time, his protector and main sponsor. He therefore left the Eternal City for France after having completed a long journey in September which saw him cross the cities of Florence, Bologna and Venice in particular
He obtains a workshop in the Louvre Palace where he lives and is responsible for decorating the gallery of Apollo. In 1765, his painting Corésus et Callirhoé, commissioned for the Manufacture des Gobelins for the tapestry of the loves of the gods, brought him into the Academy and was a great success at the Salon.
In 1805, all the resident artists, including Fragonard, were expelled from the Louvre by imperial decree, following the reorganization of the building into the Napoleon Museum. The disappearance of the sponsoring aristocracy - ruined or exiled - caused him to lose his great fortune. He then moved in with his friend Veri, at the Palais-Royal. The following year, he died, apparently overwhelmed by a stroke in his new accommodation located in the galleries of the Palais-Royal, in the almost total indifference of his contemporaries.