Jean-Honoré Fragonard

Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806) was born in Grasse, the only child of a glover, and moved to Paris with his family as a boy. François Boucher sent him to study with Chardin, after which he returned to Boucher, whose style he absorbed so completely that he was entrusted with replicas of the master's paintings. He won the Prix de Rome in 1752 and from 1756 lived at the French Academy in Rome, touring Italy with Hubert Robert and studying Tiepolo in Venice before returning to Paris in 1761. He was admitted to the Academy in 1765, but had no ambition to be a history painter and worked mostly for private patrons, painting scenes of love in a late Rococo manner of great facility, tender colour and quick brushwork. He produced more than 550 paintings, only five of them dated. The Revolution cost him his patrons, and for half a century he was largely ignored, though his handling later influenced the Impressionists, among them his grand-niece Berthe Morisot, and Renoir. Here: The Swing, his best-known work.