Jean Honore Fragonard (Fragonard Jean Honor)

(1732-1806)
Born in Grasse (Provence) in 1732. He studied art in Paris with Chardin and Boucher, and in 1755 went to Rome to study monumental and decorative painting. In 1759 Fragonard met Hubert Robert, with whom sketched scenic views in the vicinity of Rome and in the city, and in 1761 traveled to Naples, Bologna and Venice.
Fragonard returned to Paris in 1761; in 1765, presented to the competition for the right of entry into the Royal Academy of painting Kores and Callirrhoe (Louvre). She was immediately acquired for the royal tapestry factory, and the commission demanded that Fragonard wrote another. In the future, the artist received many orders from private individuals and painted on the frivolous stories.

Among the decorative paintings by Fragonard should be called a series of five large panels of vertical format, sometimes called the Stages of Love. The series was commissioned by Madame du Barry in 1770 and is now in the Frick Collection in New York. In these panels is especially visible features of the mature style masters: instead of clear contours, like Bush, - the broad strokes and moving freely posited spot color. Fragonard at the same time uses the bright pearl shades palette Boucher, the sharp and fiery red colors. This allows him to achieve amazing light effects: light enlivens the surface and practically dissolves form. His paintings are much more bold decorative rhythm than Bush. Dynamic fine lines outlining shapes of characters, repeated in vihryaschihsya contours of trees or clouds. This never-ending race lines with rhythmic alternation of brightly lit and immersed in the shadow of surfaces makes decorative paintings of Fragonard unity. At a panel meeting of the artist skillfully contrasts the almost toy figurines lovers and luxurious vegetation around them, . in the expressive 'reaction' Venus and Cupid - the statues of the sculptural group, . set in the garden among the trees, . - Feel the light mockery,
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These paintings are among the most popular works by Fragonard, but his work is much more diverse than it might seem at first glance. Tendency to the decorative, subtle sense of light and color, skillful a motion, as well as superior skill execution are always characterized his work, in whatever genre it may work.

Sometimes humor is akin to Fragonard satire of Voltaire. Perhaps not without the influence of the latter artist completed the cycle of large decorative panels four world religions. In figures Fragonard to Cervantes' novel Don Quixote and La Fontaine's fables, created during the French Revolution or shortly before it, there is the same critical spirit. In recent years, the artist's life spent in obscurity and poverty. Fragonard died in Paris in 1806.