Jean Honore Fragonard (born April 5, 1732 – died August 22, 1806) is an outstanding master of French painting of the 18th century. The work of Jean-Honore Fragonard can rightfully be called a prominent representative of the Rococo style in art. The artist’s paintings convey many stories, from biblical events to frivolous scenes with shepherdesses.

Jean-Honore Fragonard created cheerful images of gardeners, lovers, cupids and mythological characters, using rich colors, emphasizing the grace of forms. Some of his paintings, due to their decorativeness and emphasized beauty, served as models for the creation of tapestries.

Biography of Jean-Honoré Fragonard

Jean-Honore Fragonard appeared in the family of a haberdasher-glovemaker from the French town of Grasse on April 5, 1732. The boy was still a baby when his father went bankrupt and moved to Paris with his family in the hope of improving things.

The talent of the painter manifested itself in the child very early, but the parents were concerned about the financial situation and Jean was assigned as a junior clerk in the office of a poor notary. It was this man who drew attention to the boy’s talent and advised the couple to give their son an art education.

Jean-Baptiste Simeon Chardin became Fragonard’s first teacher, but his simplicity and academicism did not attract the young artist. A real discovery for him was the second teacher – Francois Boucher. Cheerful rural girls, luxurious flowers, curly trees, plump Rococo babies captivated Jean-Honore Fragonard.

Creation

The influence of Boucher’s painting style was so strong that the first works of the student could not be distinguished from the teacher’s even by sophisticated viewers. Cheerfulness, a combination of rich colors with emphasized sexual forms of characters, despite the grumbling of critics, made the paintings of the young artist in demand among buyers. But Jean-Honoré studied not only the light genre of pastoral scenes. He was interested in antiquity, the Renaissance, he enthusiastically got acquainted with the work of the great Rembrandt.

Thanks to his versatile talent, in 1752 Fragonard received the prestigious Prix de Rome for his historical work The Sacrifice of Jeroboam. He came to Rome, where he became interested in painting by Italian masters of the seventeenth century: Pietro da Cortona, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. The result of his studies was the painting “The High Priest Korez sacrifices himself in the name of saving Calliroi”, which was highly appreciated by the masters of the Paris Academy, accepting the 33-year-old artist as their member.

Until the French Revolution of 1793, Jean-Honore Fragonard continued to write spicy erotic scenes, allegorical portraits, engraved, painted the famous French parks. The public loved it, and the buyers paid handsomely. Revolutionary events dramatically changed the life of the master. The era of Classicism began, the beginning of which was laid by Jacques-Louis David.

last years of life

For some time, Fragonard served as a curator at the Louvre, was a member of the jury of various exhibitions. But his own painting became unclaimed and ceased to generate income. In 1793, the forgotten master moved to his native Grasse, but life in the province weighed heavily on him, and at the beginning of the new century, Jean-Honore Fragonard returned to the capital. Here he died, on August 22, 1806, a quiet, fine death. They say that the artist went into a familiar Parisian pastry shop, where he dozed off while waiting for an order. No one bothered him, and the death of the visitor was noticed only after a couple of hours.