"Fragonard et le dessin français au XVIIIè siècle dans les collections du Petit Palais by José-Luis de Los Llanos," (book review), Drawing, Sept.-Oct. 1993, 63-64.

Fragonard et le dessin français au XVIIIe siècle dans les collections du Petit Palais

by Jason Edward Kaufman

The brilliant draughtsman Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806) made 57 illustrations for a never-achieved edition of La Fontaine's erotic Contes et Nouvelles en vers (written 1661-85). These pictures entered the collection of the Petit Palais in 1934, mounted in a two-volume early-19th-century Contes manuscript, bound in red morocco. In 1992, the sheets were temporarily dismounted for restoration, and the museum put them on public display for the first time, taking advantage of the unique opportunity to show the works side by side. Rather than exhibit them alone, the museum brought out 127 other items, virtually every eighteenth-century French drawing in the collection, and reproduced each in a 280-page catalogue, Fragonard et le dessin français au XVIIIe siècle dans les collections du Petit Palais, with a text and entries by Petit Palais Curator José-Luis de Los Llanos.

This book is not a survey of eighteenth-century drawing in France, nor does it claim to be. Chardin and de La Tour are absent, and Boucher, Greuze, Robert, and David are represented by a single sheet each. Foremost among the collection are two independent landscapes by Fragonard, six studies by Watteau, and twenty-three figures by Vien for his series, La Caravanne du Sultan à la Mecque (1748). In addition, there are four Prud'hons, a Girodet, a Vigée-Lebrun pastel, and assorted lesser works, including narrative illustrations by Gravelot, Peyron, Moreau le Jeune, and Cochin (the latter, also for La Fontaine's Contes), and an intriguing group of six art auction catalogues and one Paris travelogue, all of whose margins contain sketches by Saint-Aubin. A number of minor works are published for the first time, such as Giles Allou's Portrait of Carlo Antonio Bertinazzi, dit 'Carlin' and Niklas Lafrensen's La chercheuse de puces. Each of the drawings is reproduced, the majority in color. (Only selected pages from the little Saint-Aubin books are reproduced.)

Specialists will have to add this catalogue to their libraries, if for no other reason, for the first color reproductions of all 57 of Fragonard's masterful illustrations. It is a large book (9 1/2 x 12-inches), and the Fragonards are reproduced at either two-thirds or slightly larger than their roughly 8 x 5 1/2-inch size. The quality of these images is extremely good, capturing not only the luminosity and tonal richness of brown-ink wash applied with pen and brush, but also underlying traces of the black-chalk counterproof Fragonard made as a guide. The Viens, too, are illustrated in color, but several reproduced less than full-page suffer from loss of clarity.

After briefly reciting the collection's history, the author offers individual catalogue entries of varying length. These generally encompass biographical information about the artist, remarks on style and iconography, description of the medium, condition, and dimensions of the sheet, date, provenance, exhibition history, bibliography, and a list of related works (not many of which are illustrated). Introducing the relevant sections, there are a short note on eighteenth-century French illustration, and expanded prefatory treatments of the Turkish mascarade figures by Vien, the illustrated booklets of Saint-Aubin, and of course, the supreme treasure, the Fragonard suite.

The entries for the latter include the corresponding passages from the Contes, ranging from frivolous, sometimes risque, parlor scenes to Goyaesque encounters with the supernatural. Indeed, the Contes were so provocative that, on his death bed, La Fontaine renounced the work in hope of avoiding damnation!

Fragonard's work is extremely difficult to date because his life is not well documented, only four paintings are precisely dated, and his drawings, though sometimes datable by their place of execution, often exist in a number of variants. This, indeed, is the case with his illustrations for the Contes. There are no fewer than four separate series, of which the Petit Palais set is the most complete. Unfortunately, only a few of the variants are reproduced, and these in postage-stamp-sized black-and-white figures. After surveying the theories of earlier specialists, de los Llanos proposes several possible sequences of execution for the different groups, but arrives at to no firm conclusion. Neither the precise date of the drawings nor the identity of their patron are pinned down. Assimilating earlier opinions, he posits a date shortly before the artist's second Italian trip, which took place in 1773-74 with the patron Bergeret de Grancourt. The author seems tempted to believe that Grancourt himself may have commissioned the series.

De los Llanos enumerates the earlier illustrations of the Contes available to Fragonard, including the Dutch first illustrated edition of 1685 and several French mid-18th-century versions. (That of Cochin (1743) is explored in greater depth in its own entries in the catalogue.) He characterizes the emergent Contes iconography as partly invented, and partly adapted from existing genre, especially bedroom, scenes. In the entries, the author demonstrates that Fragonard was well aware of the solutions of both Cochin, and the Fleming Eisen, whose 1762 edition also borrows from Cochin. It seems odd that in discussing dating and Fragonard's approach to his subject, de los Llanos relates the drawings to other works by the artist, and to other treatments of the Contes, but fails to mention Fragonard's further efforts as a literary illustrator, such as the 160 drawings he made in the 1780s for Ariosto's Orlando Furioso.

As with the Fragonards, an expanded section introduces the Turkish Caravanne figures by Vien. There is already an extensive bibliography on the carnivale masacarades of students in the French Academy in Rome. But de los Llanos quotes eye-witness descriptions of the event portrayed, presents biographical details of the sitters, and surveys both drawings of the subject by other artists, and the numerous copies after Vien (again, few are illustrated). In his concise discussion of the sales catalogues and travelogues illustrated by Saint-Aubin, a significant question is left unanswered: precisely why did the artist habitually engage in this graphic embellishment? Was it attributable solely to what Greuze called "un priapisme de dessin?" Or was there some more practical motive for his meticulous illustration of artworks for sale? This is one of the details concerning the collection that De los Llanos leaves for future scholars.

Fragonard et le dessin français au XVIIIe siècle dans les collections du Petit Palais (ISBN 2-87900-078-5) is published by Editions Paris-Musèes, 31, rue des Francs-Bourgeois, 75004 Paris. Cost: 290 FF.

Jason Edward Kaufman ©