The Armoire
<p>The Rococo taste for narrative led the great painter and printmaker Jean-Honoré Fragonard to devote his largest etching to a risqué domestic drama. A young woman and her paramour have been interrupted in a compromising position by her parents. The rumpled state of the bedclothes alone would have roused their ire, but they have also discovered the young man hiding in their daughter’s closet. The mortified young man’s strategically positioned hat leaves both the parents and viewers in little doubt of his dishonorable intentions. The girl stands barefoot and weeping in the corner out of modesty and fear, unable to meet her furious parents’ gaze.</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 1778
- Dimensions
- Image: 34.2 × 46.1 cm (13 1/2 × 18 3/16 in.); Plate: 42 × 55.2 cm (16 9/16 × 21 3/4 in.); Sheet: 49.3 × 65.2 cm (19 7/16 × 25 11/16 in.)
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Artist
- Jean-Honoré Fragonard
Artist
Painting
Jean-Honoré Fragonard 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 Régime, 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.
Full artist profile →More
More by Jean-Honoré Fragonard
Rinaldo, Astride Baiardo, Flies Off in Pursuit of Angelica
1795 · black chalk with brown wash and touches of pen andbrown ink on laid paper
Rinaldo is Welcomed by the Monks
1780 · pen and brown ink with brown and gray wash over black chalk on laid paper
Astolfo Sails off with Andronica and Sofrosina
1780 · Black chalk, with pen and brush and brown ink and brush and brown wash, on off-white laid paper
Don Quixote Attacking the Windmill
1780 · black chalk with brown and gray wash on laid paper
Don Quixote Attacking the Biscayan
1780 · brush with brown and gray washes over charcoal on laid paper
Don Quixote Defeated by the Windmill
1780 · brush with brown and gray washes over charcoal on laid paper
Record
Verified by WattsOS- Artist
- Jean-Honoré Fragonard
- Year
- 1778
- Dimensions
- Image: 34.2 × 46.1 cm (13 1/2 × 18 3/16 in.); Plate: 42 × 55.2 cm (16 9/16 × 21 3/4 in.); Sheet: 49.3 × 65.2 cm (19 7/16 × 25 11/16 in.)
- Watts ID
- WW-1778-124338
Source
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified