Portrait of Jean Honoré Fragonard

Charles Louis François Le Carpentier|Marguerite Gérard|Jean Honoré Fragonard

1808 · Etching · Drawings and Prints

This charming etching is one of the few portraits of French painter, Jean Honoré Fragonard. The portrait is a bust-length image of the artist as an older man, presented as a roundel framed by profuse foliage. Below the portrait is a partly-overgrown illusionistic plaque bearing the artist’s name. The likeness seems to be based on a portrait by Fragonard’s sister-in-law, Marguerite Gérard, while the verdant surround pays homage to Fragonard’s series of etched bacchanals of the early 1760s.

Artist

Charles Louis François Le Carpentier|Marguerite Gérard|Jean Honoré Fragonard

Date

1808

Medium

Etching

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Gift of Madeleine Fidell-Beaufort, in memory of Samuel P. Avery, 2015