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- Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732 - 1806)
- A Boy as Pierrot
- France
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- Date: about 1785
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Image size: 59.8 x 49.7 cm
- Inv: P412
- Location: Study
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- Description
- Provenance
- Further Reading
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- The painting shows the 'portrait de fantaisie' of a boy in a theatre costume that is too large for his age. It follows the template of Dutch head-studies in a costume (tronies) and adapts them to the world of the Commedia dell'Arte and the Fête galante. Fragonard also aims to evoke the sense of a pastel, a fashionable eighteenth-century technique. The combination of these traits is typical of Fragonard's intelligent play with painterly genres and styles.
The miniatures produced by Fragonard’s wife Anne-Marie Gérard are stylistically related and probably date from the same period. One of them follows the Wallace painting closely (London, Christie's, 27/28 November 2012, lot 441). Originally, the painting had a pendant of a girl in a pearl necklace (Los Angeles, County Museum of Art) that was also formerly in the Livois collection.
- The painting shows the 'portrait de fantaisie' of a boy in a theatre costume that is too large for his age. It follows the template of Dutch head-studies in a costume (tronies) and adapts them to the world of the Commedia dell'Arte and the Fête galante. Fragonard also aims to evoke the sense of a pastel, a fashionable eighteenth-century technique. The combination of these traits is typical of Fragonard's intelligent play with painterly genres and styles.