Art With Elegant Displays of Happiness Art Style Baroque

Oil painting past Jean-Honoré Fragonard (c.1767)

The Swing
Artist	Jean-Honoré Fragonard
Year	c.  1767
Medium	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	81 cm × 64.2 cm (31+ 7⁄eight  in ×25+ ane⁄4  in)
Location	Wallace Collection, London, United kingdom

The Swing (French: L'Escarpolette), also known as The Happy Accidents of the Swing (French: Les Hasards heureux de l'escarpolette, the original championship), is an 18th-century oil painting past Jean-Honoré Fragonard in the Wallace Collection in London. Information technology is considered to be one of the masterpieces of the Rococo era, and is Fragonard'southward best known work.^[1]

Painting [edit]

The painting depicts an elegant young adult female on a swing. A smile boyfriend, hiding in the bushes on the left, watches her from a vantage point that allows him to see up into her billowing dress, where his arm is pointed with hat in hand. A smiling older man, who is nearly subconscious in the shadows on the right, propels the swing with a pair of ropes. The older human being appears to be unaware of the fellow. As the immature lady swings loftier, she throws her left leg up, allowing her squeamish shoe to fly through the air. The lady is wearing a bergère hat (shepherdess hat). Ii statues are present, one of a putto, who watches from higher up the immature homo on the left with its finger in front of its lips in a sign of silence, the other of pair of putti, who sentinel from beside the older homo, on the right. At that place is a small domestic dog shown barking in the lower right hand corner, in front of the older human. Co-ordinate to the memoirs of the dramatist Charles Collé,^[2] a courtier (homme de la cour)^[iii] first asked Gabriel François Doyen to make this painting of him and his mistress. Not comfy with this frivolous piece of work, Doyen refused and passed on the committee to Fragonard.^[2] The homo had requested a portrait of his mistress seated on a swing existence pushed by a bishop, but Fragonard painted a layman.

This way of "frivolous" painting soon became the target of the philosophers of the Enlightenment, who demanded a more serious art which would prove the nobility of man.^[iv]

Provenance [edit]

The Swing (eye), as displayed at the Wallace Collection, London.

The original owner remains unclear. A firm provenance begins just with the tax farmer Marie-François Ménage de Pressigny, who was guillotined in 1794,^[5] afterwards which it was seized by the revolutionary government. It was possibly later on endemic by the marquis des Razins de Saint-Marc, and certainly by the duc de Morny. Afterwards his death in 1865, it was bought at auction in Paris by Lord Hertford, the main founder of the Wallace Collection.^[6]

Notable copies [edit]

There are two notable copies, neither by Fragonard.

• 1 copy, one time owned past Edmond James de Rothschild,^[7] portrays the woman in a blue dress.^[8]
• The other is a smaller version (56 × 46 cm), endemic by Duke Jules de Polignac.^[7] This painting became the belongings of the Grimaldi family in 1930 when Pierre de Polignac (1895-1964) married Princess Charlotte, Duchess of Valentinois (1898-1977). In 1966, the Grimaldi & Labeyrie Collection gave it to the city of Versailles, where it is currently exhibited at the Musée Lambinet, attributed to Fragonard'south workshop.^[9]

Notable derived works [edit]

• 1782: Les Hazards Heureux de l'Escarpolettes, etching and engraving by fr:Nicolas de Launay (1739–1792), 62.iii × 45.v cm (24 ⅝ × 17 ⅞ in).^[ten] Reverse to the original painting, the lady is facing right and has plumes on her hat (among other dissimilarities) because it was drawn later on the replica owned by Edmond de Rothschild.
• 1920: The verse form "Portrait of a Lady" past William Carlos Williams is believed to reference Fragonard'due south piece of work and this painting in particular. ^[xi]
• 1972: The Little Feat anthology Sailin' Shoes features front encompass artwork by Neon Park that alludes to Fragonard's piece of work.^[12]
• 1999: The starting time act of the ballet Contact: The Musical by Susan Stroman and John Weidman is described as a "contact improvisation" on the painting.^[xiii]
• 2001: The Swing (after Fragonard), a headless lifesize recreation of Fragonard'south model clothed in African fabric, by Yinka Shonibare^[fourteen]
• 2013: The animated Disney moving picture Frozen displays a version of The Swing in a scene when lead character Anna dances through an art gallery singing "For the Showtime Time in Forever."^[15]

Notes [edit]

1. ^ Ingamells, 164
2. ^ ^{a b} Collé, Charles. Periodical et mémoires de Charles Collé sur les hommes de lettres, les ouvrages dramatiques et les événements les plus mémorables du règne de Louis 15 (1748-1772). Vol. III. Paris: Firmin Didot Frères, Fils et Cie. pp. 165–166.
3. ^ Although his identity was non unveiled by Collé, it has been thought that it was Marie-François-David Bollioud de Saint-Julien, baron of Argental (1713–1788), best known as Baron de Saint-Julien, the then Receiver General of the French Clergy. However at that place is little prove for this, according to Ingamells, 163-164.
4. ^ Fragonard, The Swing. khanacademy.org. Retrieved 17 December 2016.
5. ^ "François Marie Ménage de Pressigny". The British Museum. Trustees of the British Museum. Retrieved 2020-03-27 .
6. ^ Ingamells, 165
7. ^ ^{a b} Wallace Collection (1908). Catalogue of the Oil Paintings and Water Colours in the Wallace Collection (eighth ed.). A repetition of past no means equal merit is in the collection of Businesswoman Edmond de Rothschild; a smaller version was in that of the Duc de Polignac (meet Virgile Josz: Fragonard).
8. ^ Bremmer, Jan (1991). From Sappho to De Sade: Moments in the History of Sexuality. Routledge. pp. 80–81. ISBN978-0-415-06300-five. Notation iv: According to Nevill (1903), a replica with a blue instead of a pink dress is in the possession of Baron de Rothschild.
9. ^ Base of operations Joconde: L'escarpolette, French Ministry of Culture. (in French)
10. ^ "Near This Artwork – The Art Institute of Chicago". Art Plant of Chicago. Retrieved 2011-xi-nineteen .

    "R. S. Johnson Art". R. S. Johnson Fine Fine art. Retrieved 2011-11-19 . ^{[ permanent expressionless link ]}

11. ^ University of Illinois (Winter 1998). "Mod American Poetry". Retrieved five April 2020.
12. ^ "Neon Park". lambiek.cyberspace . Retrieved 2021-06-08 .
13. ^ Terry Byrne (fourteen June 2008). "Moving tales of dear make 'contact'". The Boston Earth . Retrieved 8 Baronial 2018. 'Swinging' tells the story behind a painting by 18th-century artist Jean-Honore Fragonard, in which a girl on a swing (Ariel Shepley) is teasing her companion (Jake Pfarr), while a servant (Sean Ewing) pushes the swing for her.
14. ^ "Yinka Shonibare, MBE The Swing (after Fragonard), Yinka Shonibare, MBE Tate". Tate. Retrieved 2014-08-04 .
15. ^ "Await What We Found in Frozen | Disney Insider". Oh My Disney. 2013-12-10. Retrieved 2019-07-30 .

References [edit]

• Ingamells, John, The Wallace Collection, Catalogue of Pictures, Vol III, French before 1815, Wallace Collection, 1989, ISBN 0-900785-35-vii
• Farber, Allen (2006-04-05). "Fragonard'due south The Happy Accidents of the Swing". Country University of New York at Oneonta. Retrieved 2009-01-18 .

External links [edit]

External video
Fragonard's The Swing, Smarthistory

• The painting at the Wallace Collection website
• The Swing - Analysis and Critical Reception

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