Fragonard: Painting out of Time

At the time of his death in 1806, the rococo artist Jean-Honore Fragonard had not painted for two decades.

Following a period of huge public success, the painter’s reputation fell. Fragonard: Painting Out of Time takes this prolonged artistic silence as a point of departure to investigate the maverick personality of Fragonard within the lively society of eighteenth-century France. Personally secretive, Fragonard nevertheless created revealing images that undermined a normal sense of space and time.

Satish Padiyar investigates the life and work of the last of the libertine painters of the ancien regime, a contemporary of Denis Diderot and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and presents dramatic new perspectives on works such as The Progress of Love, painted for Madame du Barry, the infamous The Bolt, and the ever-popular The Swing.

‘A brilliant new account of Fragonard’s art that reveals some of its most intriguing secrets.’ - Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, William Dorr Boardman Professor of Fine Arts, Harvard University, and author of The Painter’s Touch: Boucher, Chardin, Fragonard

‘Deeply erudite…Fragonard might be taken to embody brilliantly gifted eccentricity, but the author deploys that singularity in ways that illuminate the whole field of later eighteenth-century art.’ - Thomas Crow, Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art, New York University