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Lot Essay
This delightful overdoor decoration is painted in thin, liquid strokes of oil paint with all the immediacy we normally associate with watercolor drawing. Yet its apparent spontaneity is the result of careful meditation, as a lively but very precise oil sketch for the composition reveals (private collection; Cuzin, op. cit., no. 207): Fragonard planned every detail of his painting before undertaking its execution.
Until they were separated in 1982, Venus Binding Cupid's Wings had been paired with another overdoor painting, The Muse of Lyric Poetry, or, 'Music', which remains in The Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena (ibid., no. 205); both paintings are of identical dimensions and executed on rectangular canvases with the same rapid touch. However, 'Music' is painted with rounded upper corners, while a close examination of the present work offers no indications that its corners have been altered from their original state; furthermore, the previously mentioned oil sketch of the composition is also rectangular in format. As Cuzin has noted, we cannot be certain, therefore, that Music and Venus Binding Cupid's Wings were created as pendants, and it is possible that the pair was 'married' sometime in the 19th century. Although nothing is known of its origins, the present painting and its putative pendant have been dated, from considerations of style, to circa 1770 by both Rosenberg and Cuzin.
Until they were separated in 1982, Venus Binding Cupid's Wings had been paired with another overdoor painting, The Muse of Lyric Poetry, or, 'Music', which remains in The Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena (ibid., no. 205); both paintings are of identical dimensions and executed on rectangular canvases with the same rapid touch. However, 'Music' is painted with rounded upper corners, while a close examination of the present work offers no indications that its corners have been altered from their original state; furthermore, the previously mentioned oil sketch of the composition is also rectangular in format. As Cuzin has noted, we cannot be certain, therefore, that Music and Venus Binding Cupid's Wings were created as pendants, and it is possible that the pair was 'married' sometime in the 19th century. Although nothing is known of its origins, the present painting and its putative pendant have been dated, from considerations of style, to circa 1770 by both Rosenberg and Cuzin.