A wooded landscape with figures at the edge of a pond

Although best-known for his amorous allegorical and mythological scenes and his portraits, Fragonard was also an accomplished landscape painter. He was inspired by the cattle and sheep-filled landscapes of Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione but was perhaps most influenced, as can be seen here, by the Dutch masters Jacob van Ruisdael and Jan Wijnants. Fragonard's landscape here is imbued with the same grayish light, gnarled trees, and looming clouds that characterize the works of his Dutch predecessors. The fallen branches at right are also motifs that seem to have been borrowed from Ruisdael or one of his contemporaries, and the topography of the rolling, grass-topped dunes also evokes a northern atmosphere. However Fragonard has, as ever, imbued the scene with his own personal touch, brushing in paint with a frivolity and lightness that betrays his hand and modernizes the older idiom. It is not surprising that Fragonard was so inspired by the northern landscape masters of the century before: 17th-century Dutch paintings were widely appreciated by French collectors of the second half of the 18th century, and it is almost certain that Fragonard would have had the opportunity to study such works firsthand.

The present canvas was rediscovered and published for the first time in 2007. A second version of similar dimensions, dated by Rosenberg and Cuzin to c. 1766-1770 -- just after the artist's return from Italy -- is in a private collection, and it is likely that this landscape dates to the same years (P. Rosenberg, Tout l'oeuvre peint de Fragonard, Paris, 1989, no. 144; J.-P. Cuzin, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Life and work, complete catalogue of the oil paintings, Fribourg, 1988, no. 131). In comparison, however, the present work displays a richer composition and a number of additional details.