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Lot Essay
Fragonard’s sanguine landscapes have always been among his most admired drawings, and the artist started creating them in the years he spent in Italy between 1756 and 1761. The present work can be compared to several other sheets of nearly identical size, among them one in a New York private collection and another in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (inv. WA2010.62; see E. Williams in Fragonard. Drawing Triumphant. Works from New York Collections, exhib. cat., New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016-2017, no. 12, ill.; see also E. Williams, Drawings by Fragonard in North American Collections, exhib. cat., Washington, National Gallery of Art, Cambridge, Harvard University, Fogg Art Museum, and New York, Frick Collection, 1978-1979, nos. 7, 8, ill.).
As was already suggested by Eunice Williams when the present sheet was offered in these rooms in 1997 (see Provenance), these drawings must date from around 1760-1761, when Fragonard, at the end of his stay in Italy, travelled around the peninsula with his patron, Jean-Claude-Richard (‘Abbé’) de Saint-Non. The country he discovered must have inspired these drawings, executed in different hues of lively red chalk. Williams remarks that they have ‘veracity – a sense of place and even of season’, but also acknowledges that Fragonard ‘structured the composition, using his memory and his artistry to convince the viewer’ (Williams, op. cit., p. 98). The landscape of the Euganean Hills near Padua and the buildings encountered there by the artist and his companion in the summer of 1761 are masterfully combined in an enchanting whole; ‘the viewer is forced to read carefully to discover them, like prizes in a treasure hunt’ (ibid.). The foliage is executed in patterns, at the same time regular and endlessly varied. Small ‘stick figures’ bring further life to the view, and invite the viewer to wander around in Fragonard’s vision of nature and man’s place in it.
As was already suggested by Eunice Williams when the present sheet was offered in these rooms in 1997 (see Provenance), these drawings must date from around 1760-1761, when Fragonard, at the end of his stay in Italy, travelled around the peninsula with his patron, Jean-Claude-Richard (‘Abbé’) de Saint-Non. The country he discovered must have inspired these drawings, executed in different hues of lively red chalk. Williams remarks that they have ‘veracity – a sense of place and even of season’, but also acknowledges that Fragonard ‘structured the composition, using his memory and his artistry to convince the viewer’ (Williams, op. cit., p. 98). The landscape of the Euganean Hills near Padua and the buildings encountered there by the artist and his companion in the summer of 1761 are masterfully combined in an enchanting whole; ‘the viewer is forced to read carefully to discover them, like prizes in a treasure hunt’ (ibid.). The foliage is executed in patterns, at the same time regular and endlessly varied. Small ‘stick figures’ bring further life to the view, and invite the viewer to wander around in Fragonard’s vision of nature and man’s place in it.