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Lot Essay
This version of one of Fragonard's greatest and most celebrated compositions has been unavailable to scholars for more than 70 years, and its reappearance constitutes a noteworthy event. In the late 19th century the painting was in the collection of Lady Holland at Stanmore Castle, where it was considered the pendant to a version of Fragonard's Dream of Love (lost; the primary version is in the Muse du Louvre, Paris; Cuzin, no. 253). It later appeared at Christie's London in 1913, where acquired by Agnew's, and was subsequently sold by Lord Duveen (in the 1920s) to J.N. Willys of Toledo, Ohio, after which it disappeared from view; it has, until now, been known only from an old black and white photograph. Direct examination of the painting reveals a splendid, fully autograph replica of Fragonard's late masterpiece The Fountain of Love in the Wallace Collection, London, a seminal work which anticipated the proto-Romantic style of Prud'hon, Baron Grard and Girodet (Cuzin, no. 373).
The Goncourt's evocation of the subject of The Fountain of Love is unsurpassed: 'A pair of lovers, crowned with roses, rushes forward; the wind that was severed by Atalanta's onward course strikes the throat of the woman and flings back her tunic; she and her companion have only just reached the marble margin of a fountain -- 'La Fontaine d'Amour'; and both, with burning eyes and famished mouths, lean forward to quench the thirst and desire of their lips at the magic cup borne by flying cupids....' (E. & J. de Goncourt in French Eighteenth Century Painters, trans. R. Ironside, 1981, p. 280).
The composition is one of a group of three allegorical subjects painted by Fragonard in the 1780s in which he forged a new style and approach to depicting themes of love and erotic pleasure: in all of them, classicized and sculptural figures of chilly, marmoreal grace are warmed by vaporous clouds of golden chiaroscuro and illuminated in an otherworldly, sepulchral glow. In addition to The Fountain of Love, Fragonard painted The Vow to Love (principal version in a private collection, New York; see Cuzin no. 377) and The Sacrifice of the Rose (principal version in the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Stewart Resnick, Beverly Hills; Cuzin no. 385), in this new, sulphorous style which represented the artist's response to the rising tide of neoclassicism.
Several autograph versions of each of the three compositions are known. In addition to the Wallace painting, which is signed, and the present Fountain of Love, which is of almost identical dimensions, there is a smaller version of the subject (47 x 37.5cm.) delicately rendered by Fragonard in pale, pearly tones (collection of Edward and Martha Snider; Cuzin, no. 374); another reprise of the composition, formerly in the Walferdin and Doucet collections, is today known only from an old photograph and its attribution to Fragonard must be regarded with caution (see Cuzin, no. 375). An autograph replica of The Vow to Love in the Louvre (Cuzin, no. 378) and a copy in the Muse des Beaux-Arts, Orleans, are well-known, and two autograph replicas of The Sacrifice of the Rose (one in a French private collection, the other in the Museo Nacional de arte Decorativo, Buenos Aires; Cuzin, nos. 386 & 387, respectively) have been identified, as well as two variants of the composition in American private collections (Cuzin nos. 388,389).
The Wallace Fountain of Love has always been dated to 1785 on the basis of N-F. Regnault's stipple etching, published in November of that year. As there are no detectable differences in composition or handling between the Wallace painting and the present replica, it can be confidently assumed to have been executed almost immediately afterward.
Fragonard's response to Antiquity in these later paintings was part of a general rediscovery of classical art and culture -- The Fountain of Love was painted in the same year as David's Oath of the Horatii. Yet Fragonard's reaction to neoclassicism was entirely his own, and in conceiving the present picture he not only looked to ancient sculpture for inspiration, but to the greatest masters of the Baroque: the golden, nocturnal glow that embraces the lovers is an evident tribute to Rembrandt -- one of Fragonard's favorite painters -- and the running couple's parallel profiles recall the paired Roman heads in Rubens' Tiberius and Agrippina (National Gallery of Art, Washington), a painting that the artist saw in Vienna in August 1774 when he visited the collection of the Prince of Liechtenstein, in whose Gallery the painting then hung.
In The Fountain of Love, Fragonard seems to have set out to imbue neoclassicism with a passion and intensity not found in the bloodless canvases of Vien and the first-generation exponents of the neo-Greek style; as Colin B. Bailey has observed, 'his vision was distinctive: pagan, celebratory, unremittingly carnal but thoroughly imbued with references from the classical past' (1789: French Art During the Revolution, ed. A. Wintermute, 1989, p. 193) The present canvas -- once again restored to its proper place within the great painter's oeuvre -- is Fragonard's masterly reprise of one of the most enduring and influential cultural icons of the 18th century.
The Goncourt's evocation of the subject of The Fountain of Love is unsurpassed: 'A pair of lovers, crowned with roses, rushes forward; the wind that was severed by Atalanta's onward course strikes the throat of the woman and flings back her tunic; she and her companion have only just reached the marble margin of a fountain -- 'La Fontaine d'Amour'; and both, with burning eyes and famished mouths, lean forward to quench the thirst and desire of their lips at the magic cup borne by flying cupids....' (E. & J. de Goncourt in French Eighteenth Century Painters, trans. R. Ironside, 1981, p. 280).
The composition is one of a group of three allegorical subjects painted by Fragonard in the 1780s in which he forged a new style and approach to depicting themes of love and erotic pleasure: in all of them, classicized and sculptural figures of chilly, marmoreal grace are warmed by vaporous clouds of golden chiaroscuro and illuminated in an otherworldly, sepulchral glow. In addition to The Fountain of Love, Fragonard painted The Vow to Love (principal version in a private collection, New York; see Cuzin no. 377) and The Sacrifice of the Rose (principal version in the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Stewart Resnick, Beverly Hills; Cuzin no. 385), in this new, sulphorous style which represented the artist's response to the rising tide of neoclassicism.
Several autograph versions of each of the three compositions are known. In addition to the Wallace painting, which is signed, and the present Fountain of Love, which is of almost identical dimensions, there is a smaller version of the subject (47 x 37.5cm.) delicately rendered by Fragonard in pale, pearly tones (collection of Edward and Martha Snider; Cuzin, no. 374); another reprise of the composition, formerly in the Walferdin and Doucet collections, is today known only from an old photograph and its attribution to Fragonard must be regarded with caution (see Cuzin, no. 375). An autograph replica of The Vow to Love in the Louvre (Cuzin, no. 378) and a copy in the Muse des Beaux-Arts, Orleans, are well-known, and two autograph replicas of The Sacrifice of the Rose (one in a French private collection, the other in the Museo Nacional de arte Decorativo, Buenos Aires; Cuzin, nos. 386 & 387, respectively) have been identified, as well as two variants of the composition in American private collections (Cuzin nos. 388,389).
The Wallace Fountain of Love has always been dated to 1785 on the basis of N-F. Regnault's stipple etching, published in November of that year. As there are no detectable differences in composition or handling between the Wallace painting and the present replica, it can be confidently assumed to have been executed almost immediately afterward.
Fragonard's response to Antiquity in these later paintings was part of a general rediscovery of classical art and culture -- The Fountain of Love was painted in the same year as David's Oath of the Horatii. Yet Fragonard's reaction to neoclassicism was entirely his own, and in conceiving the present picture he not only looked to ancient sculpture for inspiration, but to the greatest masters of the Baroque: the golden, nocturnal glow that embraces the lovers is an evident tribute to Rembrandt -- one of Fragonard's favorite painters -- and the running couple's parallel profiles recall the paired Roman heads in Rubens' Tiberius and Agrippina (National Gallery of Art, Washington), a painting that the artist saw in Vienna in August 1774 when he visited the collection of the Prince of Liechtenstein, in whose Gallery the painting then hung.
In The Fountain of Love, Fragonard seems to have set out to imbue neoclassicism with a passion and intensity not found in the bloodless canvases of Vien and the first-generation exponents of the neo-Greek style; as Colin B. Bailey has observed, 'his vision was distinctive: pagan, celebratory, unremittingly carnal but thoroughly imbued with references from the classical past' (1789: French Art During the Revolution, ed. A. Wintermute, 1989, p. 193) The present canvas -- once again restored to its proper place within the great painter's oeuvre -- is Fragonard's masterly reprise of one of the most enduring and influential cultural icons of the 18th century.