French Rococo Era Painter, 1732-1806 was a French painter and printmaker whose late Rococo manner was distinguished by remarkable facility, exuberance, and hedonism. One of the most prolific artists active in the last decades of the Ancien Regime, Fragonard produced more than 550 paintings , of which only five are dated. Among his most popular works are genre paintings conveying an atmosphere of intimacy and veiled eroticism. He was born at Grasse, Alpes-Maritimes, the son of François Fragonard, a glover, and Françoise Petit. He was articled to a Paris notary when his father's circumstances became strained through unsuccessful speculations, but showed such talent and inclination for art that he was taken at the age of eighteen to François Boucher, who, recognizing the youth's rare gifts but disinclined to waste his time with one so inexperienced, sent him to Chardin's atelier. Fragonard studied for six months under the great luminist, then returned more fully equipped to Boucher, whose style he soon acquired so completely that the master entrusted him with the execution of replicas of his paintings. Though not yet a pupil of the Academy, Fragonard gained the Prix de Rome in 1752 with a painting of "Jeroboam Sacrificing to the Golden Calf", but before proceeding to Rome he continued to study for three years under Charles-Andre van Loo. In the year preceding his departure he painted the "Christ washing the Feet of the Apostles" now at Grasse cathedral. On September 17, 1756, he took up his abode at the French Academy in Rome, then presided over by Charles-Joseph Natoire. While at Rome, Fragonard contracted a friendship with a fellow painter, Hubert Robert. In 1760, they toured Italy together, executing numerous sketches of local scenery. It was in these romantic gardens, with their fountains, grottos, temples and terraces, that Fragonard conceived the dreams which he was subsequently to render in his art. He also learned to admire the masters of the Dutch and Flemish schools (Rubens, Hals, Rembrandt, Ruisdael), imitating their loose and vigorous brushstrokes. Added to this influence was the deep impression made upon his mind by the florid sumptuousness of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, whose works he had an opportunity to study in Venice before he returned to Paris in 1761. In 1765 his "Coresus et Callirhoe" secured his admission to the Academy. It was made the subject of a pompous (though not wholly serious) eulogy by Diderot, and was bought by the king, who had it reproduced at the Gobelins factory. Hitherto Fragonard had hesitated between religious, classic and other subjects; but now the demand of the wealthy art patrons of Louis XV's pleasure-loving and licentious court turned him definitely towards those scenes of love and voluptuousness with which his name will ever be associated, and which are only made acceptable by the tender beauty of his color and the virtuosity of his facile brushwork;   Related Paintings of Jean-Honore Fragonard :. | The Swing | A Young Girl Reading | Park Landscape | Education is Everything | Pursuing a dove |
Related Artists:
Jean Paul Selinger
Jean Paul Selinger (1850-1909) and Emily Selinger (1848-1927), husband and wife, had summer art studios at the Glen House and the Crawford House. Born in Boston, Jean Paul studied at the Lowell Institute and in 1875 he went to Germany to study at the Munich Academy with Wilhelm Leibl. Upon returning, he opened an art studio in Providence, Rhode Island, and married Emily McGary, also an artist. The Selingers had a studio in Boston and a summer art studio at the Glen House, Pinkham Notch in the 1880s. In 1894 the Selingers moved into the former studio of Frank H. Shapleigh at the Crawford House. In August 1894 the Selingers accepted an invitation to serve on the board of judges for a North Conway Coaching Parade Committee. Jean Paul painted numerous portraits, still-life paintings, and White Mountain landscapes. Emily painted both watercolors and oils of local flora. Jean Paul was a member of the Boston Art Club. He exhibited at the National Academy of Design in 1880 and the Paint and Clay Club in Boston in 1889.
HORENBOUT, Gerard
Flemish Northern Renaissance Painter and Manuscript Illuminator, ca.1465-1541 Painter, designer, scribe and cartographer. He may have been the pupil of Li?vin de Stoevere ( fl 1463), the only painter of the five artists who guaranteed his admission fee into the guild of painters and illuminators in Ghent in 1487. Horenbout became a versatile and productive artist, painting altarpieces, portraits and illuminated manuscripts and designing tapestries and stained-glass windows. He also collaborated with the nuns of the convent of Galilee near Ghent in making a model garden with flowers made of cloth that he delivered to Margaret of Austria, Regent of the Netherlands, at her court in Mechelen. He seems to have achieved a degree of wealth commensurate with his output: in 1503 he acquired a house
CLAEISSENS, Antoon
Flemish painter (b. ca. 1538, Brugge, d. 1613, Brugge). Flemish painter and draughtsman. In 1587 he was working in Rome with the Brussels painter Frans van de Kasteele. That he subsequently lived in Brussels is confirmed by documentary evidence and by his status as court painter to the governors of the southern Netherlands. Stylistically, de Clerck's work (both paintings and drawings) is close to that of the Antwerp late Mannerist Marten de Vos, traditionally thought to have been his teacher, but it is possible that he was apprenticed to Joos van Winghe in Italy. He was later a member of the Brussels painters' guild, where from 1601 to 1611 Jan van Overstraeten was registered as his pupil. It was in 1594 that de Clerck was appointed court painter in Brussels, first to Archduke Ernest. In 1596, after the Archduke's death, his brother Emperor Rudolf II arranged for de Clerck to stay on as court painter in the service of the new Archdukes, Albert and Isabella. In 1609 de Clerck and Wenceslas Cobergher were commissioned to decorate the ceiling of the oratorium in the archducal palace in Brussels