Supreme art is
a traditional statement of certain heroic and religious truth,
passed on from age to age, modified by individual genius,
but never abandoned.
William Butler Yeats
She Turns My Head
The Garden of Earthly Delights
Happy face, nymph-like girl
Eyes like cherries, seventeen
Delightful prattle
She turns my head.
Bernard, Chevalier de Bonnard (1744-1784), Poesies diverses,
published in 1791
One day in October 1766, the
Parisian painter
Jean-Honore Fragonard
was summoned to the hunting lodge of Baron Samt-Julien. The aristocratic
treasurer of the Catholic Church pointed to his mistress and commanded: "I
want you to paint Madame on a swing kept in motion by a bishop. Put me in
it where I can see the legs of this pretty girl or even closer, if you want to make
the picture even more pleasing." A man of the world, Baron Saint-Julien
had already been turned down by a painter who was probably squeamish about
the consequences of carrying out his orders — someone who had made a name
for himself with representations of saints and plague victims and felt the commission was indecent so he suggested
Fragonard, who
accepted. The result was The Swing.
Fragonard had no qualms about
damaging his reputation as a painter of blameless scenes by taking on this
rather delicate commission. Of course
Fragonard, who had been a spoilt
child, was nothing if not urbane and sophisticated himself. "All his work
is dedicated to women; why shouldn't his life have been so too?" asks a
biographer. In 1756 the twenty-four-vear-old
Fragonard took advantage of
a grant from the Academic de France to study works of the Old Masters in
Rome. He is said to have devoted himself at least as passionately to the
licentious dark-eyed beauties of Trastevere as to the paintings he had
gone to Rome to study. In fact, the president of the Academie de France in
Rome began to worry about his protege.
Fragonard's reputation followed him
back to Paris, where all boudoirs were open to him on his return.The
beauties of the day and dancers whose "hearts were not so constant" all
sought the painter's attentions. Bernard, Chevalier de Bonnard advised the
painters of the day to "court all lovely ladies you paint and be sure that you are paid for your portraits in the arms of your
sitters". Nothing is really known about
Fragonard's love life. However, he
was so highly acclaimed as a painter that he was soon provided with his
own studio in the Louvre. Begrudging him his marriage because it deprived
them of gossip, his biographers characterised his wife as "a peevish
termagant". However, he was devoted to her, tenderly calling her "the best
of all wives". Despite his reputation with the ladies, the
Fragonard did
show reticence in one respect: he convinced the depraved Baron Saint-Julien
that it was necessary to replace the bishop, who was originally supposed
to push the swing in the painting, with a courtier.
