Fragonard

New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1988. Hardbound. VG/Good, minor tears to dustjkacket. Bright blue cloth, gold lettering, illus. dj; 635 pp.; 141 color illustrations and over 1000 bw illustrations. Published in conjunction with the exhibitions at Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1988. A weighty tome! "If the art of Jean-Honore Fragonard (1732-1806) consisted entirely of coy bedroom scenes, chubby cupids, slick sensual allegories and sentimental portraits of bearded old men, one could easily dismiss the French rococo painter as passe. But the exhibition now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and this catalogue, give us Fragonard the moody outsider from Provence, the nature poet who liberated painting with his spontaneous brushwork. Rosenberg, chief curator at the Louvre, where the exhibit made its debut, helps us to appreciate the keen observation of the Italian drawings, the naturalism of the landscapes and animal studies. In the wild poetry of Wagon in the Mud or the totally unforced intimacy of The Kiss, Fragonard tapped depths of feeling rarely glimpsed in his historical or genre paintings. The overwritten text, full of superlatives, is complemented by 1300 illustrations, making this the fullest account to date of Fragonard's opus." (Publishers Weekly).