A young Girl, seated, looking down to the left, her arms crossed

For about ten years between 1775 and 1785 Fragonard executed a large series of intimate portraits of young girls either standing or seated. These have been sometimes, unsuccessfully, identified with members of Fragonard's family, Rosalie Fragonard and Marguerite Gérard. With the recent publication of a series of Fragonard's drawings of family members recently acquired by the Louvre an identification with Fragonard's sister-in-law is difficult to sustain, thought there is a certain resemblance with Fragonard's daughter Rosalie, who died in 1788, M. Roland-Michel, Sur sept médaillons de Fragonard, in Hommage au dessin, mélanges offerts à Roseline Bacou, 1996, p. 448, fig. 5. A number of sheets were exhibited and/or illustrated in Paris, Grand Palais, and New York, Metropolitan Museum, Fragonard, in 1988, no. 203; p. 433, figs. 1-8; p. 497, fig. 1; nos. 298-9; p. 569, fig. 3.The same sitter can be identified in another drawing in Count Seilern's collection at the Courtauld Institute, London, E. Williams, Drawings by Fragonard in North American Collections, exhib. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington and elsewhere, 1979, p. 136, fig. 8. The Courtauld drawing, of the same technique, but slightly smaller, is signed and dated 1785 and depicts a girl seated on a chair looking to the right. Similar features of the girl are found in a drawing exhibited by Eunice Williams of a Young Girl taking a Nap (op. cit., no. 54, illustrated).
We are grateful to Eunice Williams for her help in cataloguing the present lot.