Jean-Honoré Fragonard was a French painter and printmaker whose late Rococo manner was distinguished by remarkable facility, exuberance, and hedonism. One of the most prolific artists active in the last decades of the Ancien Régime, Fragonard produced more than 550 paintings, of which only five are dated. Among his most popular works are genre paintings conveying an atmosphere of intimacy and veiled eroticism.
Self-Portrait, 1780s, black chalk with gray wash
Statue of Fragonard in Grasse, his birthplace
Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Blindman's Buff, 1775–1780, Timken Museum of Art, San Diego
Early engraving after Jean-Honoré Fragonard titled Chaumiére Italienne
Rococo, less commonly Roccoco, also known as Late Baroque, is an exceptionally ornamental and dramatic style of architecture, art and decoration which combines asymmetry, scrolling curves, gilding, white and pastel colours, sculpted moulding, and trompe-l'œil frescoes to create surprise and the illusion of motion and drama. It is often described as the final expression of the Baroque movement.
Image: Ca' rezzonico, salone da ballo, quadrature di pietro visconti e affreschi di g.b. crosato (caduta di febo e 4 continenti), 1753, 02
Image: Charles Cressent, Chest of drawers, c. 1730 at Waddesdon Manor
Image: Kaisersaal Würzburg
Integrated rococo carving, stucco and fresco at Zwiefalten Abbey (1739 – 1745)