Painting with prodigal hand a series of elegant masterpieces in a century that made elegance its god, Fragonard disappeared, neglected and well-nigh discredited for years, with Watteau and Boucher and Greuze for goodly company; but with them, he is come into his own again, lord of a very realm of beauty.
To understand the atmosphere of the France of the seventeen-hundreds before the Revolution it is necessary to understand the art of Watteau, of Boucher, of Fragonard, and of Chardin. Of its pictured romance, Watteau and Boucher and Fragonard hold the keys. To shut the book of these is to be blind to the revelation of the greater part of that romance. Watteau states the new France of light airs and gaiety and pleasant prospects, tinged with sweet melancholy, that became the dream of a France rid of the pomposity and mock-heroics of the Grand Monarque; Boucher fulfils the century; Fragonard utters its swan’s note. The art of Fragonard embodies astoundingly the pulsing evening of a century of the life of France, uttering its gay blithe note, skimming over the dangerous deeps of its mighty significance, yet not wholly disregarding the deeps as did the art of his two great forerunners. His is the last word of that mock-heroic France that Louis the Fourteenth built on stately and pompous pretence; that Louis the Fifteenth still further corrupted by the worship of mere elegance; that Louis the Sixteenth sent to its grave—a suffering people out of which a real France arose, from mighty and awful travail, like a giant, and stood bestriding the world, a superb reality.
The plates are printed by Bemrose & Sons, Ltd., Derby and London
The text at the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh