The Little Park

Jean Honoré Fragonard

ca. 1763 · Etching · Drawings and Prints

The Little Park is one of Fragonard’s most famous and enigmatic subjects. He treated it six times—in two red chalk drawings, a counterproof re-worked in brown wash, an oil painting, a gouache, and the present work--an etching. Although it does not seem to depict an actual site, the composition and motifs relate closely to drawings he had made in the gardens of the Villa d’Este at Tivoli, outside Rome. Done on an intimate scale and in a delicate technique of silvery black lines, the print alternates planes of sunlight and shadow to create the effect of spatial recession in the formal, and somewhat overgrown, garden.

Artist

Jean Honoré Fragonard

Date

ca. 1763

Medium

Etching

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 2011