JEAN-HONORÉ FRAGONARD (Grasse 1732-1806 Paris)‘Le Verrou’ (The bolt)JEAN-HONORÉ FRAGONARD (Grasse 1732-1806 Paris)‘Le Verrou’ (The bolt)with inscription ‘fragonard’ in pen and brown ink (lower right)red chalk, brush and brown ink, touches of pen and brown ink, pen and brown ink framing line, watermark shield with Strasbourg Lily surmounted by a crown and ‘[D] & J. C. BLAUW’9 3/8 x 14 3/8 in. (24 x 36.5 cm.)Few pictures are as emblematic of French eighteenth-century art as Fragonard’s scene of a pair of youthful lovers locked in a passionate embrace next to the bed where their amorous struggle seems to have started - and where it is likely to continue. As a precaution, the young man endeavors to close the bolt on the room’s door, while the girl appears to feebly prevent him from doing so. This latch - verrou in French - gave its name to the scene from the publication in 1784 of an engraving by the printmaker Maurice Blot, which assured the wide popularity of the composition while the painting it was based on was hidden from public view. Only late in the twentieth century was it recognized in a canvas that reappeared on the market, later, in 1974, acquired by the Louvre and consecrated as the original of the famous composition in the 1987-1988 monographic show on the artist (fig. 1; inv. RF 1974 2; see Cuzin, op. cit., pp. 179-182, fig. 216, no. 336, ill.; Rosenberg, op. cit., no. 236, ill.; Schieder, op. cit., no. 84, ill.; and Faroult, op. cit., 2015-2016, no. 72, ill.). Today, Le Verrou forms, among other masterpieces, a cornerstone of the museum’s unsurpassed collection of French painting of the eighteenth century - one of the defining images of the time’s perceived lightheartedness and joie de vivre, indeed of its frivolity, as well as of its maker’s ambitions, even when working in a genre deemed inferior at the time. The large canvas (73 x 93 cm) first appeared in the 1785 sale of the collection of Louis-Gabriel, Marquis de Véri Raionard (1722-1785), an important patron of contemporary French artists (C.B. Bailey, ‘Progressive Taste, Aristocratic Lineage: Louis-Gabriel, Marquis de Véri (1722-1785)’, in Patriotic taste. Collecting Modern Art in Pre-Revolutionary Paris, New Haven and London, 2002, pp. 101-130). Véri must have commissioned the picture from Fragonard shortly before his death, in the late 1770s, as a companion piece for a slightly earlier commissioned painting by the artist in the Marquis’ collection, an Adoration of the shepherds, today also in the Louvre (inv. RF 1988 11; see Cuzin, op. cit., pp. 178-179, fig. 215, no. 375, ill.; Rosenberg, op. cit., no. 234, ill.; and Faroult, op. cit., 2015-2016, no. 71, ill.). The surprising pairing - a scene of religious bliss and significance and one of flighty love and desire - would have seemed less odd in the context of the collection of Véri, who seems to have been fond of contemporary and somewhat risqué subject matter, and appears to have been a freethinker (see also Faroult, op. cit., 2015-2016, p. 208, under nos. 71-72). Fragonard refined the composition of the painting for Véri in a spirited oil sketch, which recently entered the collections of the Louvre Abu Dhabi (fig. 2; previously in the sale Christie’s, London, 17 December 1999, lot 95; see Rosenberg, op. cit., no. 237, ill.; and Schieder, op. cit., no. 83, ill.). This work, too, must date from the late 1770s, and corresponds in its mise-en-cadre and many of its details with the finished work. But Fragonard first formulated a variant of the composition in at least two drawings which must date from years before, before his visits to the Low Countries, Italy and Germany in 1773-1774, a watershed moment in his career. One of these drawings is the present work, rarely seen in public since an exhibition in Paris in 1884, and brought together with the painting briefly in the twentieth century when in the Cotnareanu collection; the other is a work in pen and wash, formerly in the collection of Edmond de Rothschild, and only known from a black and white photograph (fig. 3; see Rosenberg, op. cit., p. 481, under no. 236, fig. 1). (A third sheet, also unlocated (ibid., p. 481, under no. 236, fig. 4), may be by a later hand.). The Rothschild drawing appeared in the Varanchan de Saint-Geniès sale in 1777. They fit, however, with a group of drawings of similar subjects, particularly close to contemporary works by Pierre-Antoine Baudouin, which are considerably earlier, such as the Girl’s dormitory at the Harvard Art Museums (inv. 1954.10; see Rosenberg, op. cit., no. 113, ill.), or the Dancing Lesson in Lisbon’s Museu Calouste Gulbenkian (fig. 4; inv. 2297; see ibid., no. 114, ill.; and N. Turner, with M. Fidalgo and J.A. Seabra de Carvalho, European Master Drawings from Portuguese Collections, exhib. cat., Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, Lisbon, Centro Cultural de Belém, and Porto, Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis, 2000-2001, no. 98, ill.; for the connection between Baudouin and Fragonard, see Faroult, op. cit., 2020, chapters 7 and 8). Often dated around 1770, a few scholars believe at least some of these scenes may be as early as 1765 (Dupuy-Vachey, op. cit., p. 26, caption of fig. 19; and eadem in Faroult, op. cit., 2015-2016, pp. 154-161, under nos. 46-49). Compared to the focus of the scene in the oil sketch and the painting for Véri, the two drawings of Le Verrou present the action with a greater attention to detail and to the anecdotal, in keeping with many of Fragonard’s works from the same years. Thus, the room is decorated with two works of art, including an oval portrait of what seems to be a stern military man witnessing the tryst of his descendants. The youth’s clothes are spread out over the floor, from his jacket at his foot, to his tricorn and rapier next to the chair at right. The furniture is Louis XV, in contrast to the Neoclassical pieces in the painting. The fan on the floor and the plate or bread on the table are absent in the picture, whereas the latter includes a fallen jug and a bouquet; in all three an apple appears, in which some have been tempted to see a religious allusion (compare the discussions in Cuzin, op. cit., p. 182; and Faroult, op. cit., 2007, p. 33). What distinguishes the Getty sheet from most other lavis by Fragonard is its technique: instead of in the usual loose sketch in black chalk (compare the Harvard drawing mentioned above, as well as those in Rosenberg, op. cit., nos. 115-118, ill.), here, the composition is set up in a fairly precise, rather angular underdrawing in red chalk. Only the Dancing lesson in Lisbon (fig. 4), which was sadly damaged by water and later restored, displays the same technique. (The two drawings were temporarily united in the Josse collection, and sold in the same 1894 auction as lots 11 and 12.) For the Lisbon sheet, it has been suggested that the red chalk is the result of a counterproof (by Eunice Williams, followed in Turner, op. cit., p. 218); however, while the condition of that drawing makes it today more difficult to assess this statement, it is more likely to be the result of some kind of tracing, used to transfer the composition from an earlier drawing. Such a drawing may be recorded for the Lisbon Dancing lesson (see Rosenberg, op. cit., p. 240); for the Getty drawing, the model would probably be the version from the Rothschild collection, executed in pen and wash (fig. 3). Although the photograph through which the latter drawing is known today does not allow for a line-by-line comparison, it is clear that the red chalk in the sheet under discussion follows both its penwork and washes in many details; note, for instance, the folds in the young lovers’ clothes, or the touches of wash on the youth’s calves. Among the passages where Fragonard gave himself more freedom is the oval portrait painting, suggested in a few dashes that do not correspond to what appears in the Rothschild drawing. One has to assume that Fragonard came up with the method involving red chalk in order to duplicate efficiently a composition he felt he could not improve on, perhaps to satisfy the request for a second version from an eager collector. With his supple use of wash, his usual technique to finish this type of drawings, he brought the bare sketch to life, producing the definitive version of the first iteration of his famous composition, before coming back to it for Véri’s later commission.来源: 细节 JEAN-HONORÉ FRAGONARD (Grasse 1732-1806 Paris)‘Le Verrou’ (The bolt)with inscription ‘fragonard’ in pen and brown ink (lower right)red chalk, brush and brown ink, touches of pen and brown ink, pen and brown ink framing line, watermark shield with Strasbourg Lily surmounted by a crown and ‘[D] & J. C. BLAUW’9 3/8 x 14 3/8 in. (24 x 36.5 cm.) 来源 Possibly anonymous collection; Paris, 2-5 May 1781, part of lot 128. Possibly Morel collection; Paris, 19-22 April (i.e. 3 May) 1786, lot 377 (sold to Le Brun). Possibly Jean-Baptiste-Laurent Boyer de Fonscolombe (1716-1788), Aix-en-Provence; Paris, 18-21 January 1790, part of lot 190. Possibly Eugène Tondu; Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 10-13 May 1865, lot 225. François-Hippolyte Walferdin (1795-1880), Paris; Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 12-16 April 1880, lot 212, where acquired by H.H.A. Josse; Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 28-29 May 1894, lot 12 (sold to Wertheimer). Alfred Beurdeley (1847-1919), Paris (L. 421); Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 13-15 March 1905, lot 63 (sold to Féral). Jules Féral (1874-1944), Paris. Maurice-Édouard Kann (1839-1906), Paris. Albert Meyer, Paris; by descent to his widow (?); Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 15 June 1938, lot 8; where acquired by Léon Cotnareanu (1891-1970) and Yvonne Le Baron Coty Cotnareanu (1880-1966), Paris. Anonymous sale; Sotheby’s, New York, 16 January 1985, lot 149. with Hobhouse, London. Acquired by Ann and Gordon Getty from the above in 1986. 出版 R. Portalis, Honoré Fragonard. Sa vie et son œuvre, Paris, 1889, p. 314. L. Vaillat in L’Œuvre de J.-B.-S. Chardin et de J.-H. Fragonard, Paris, [1908], p. XX, under no. 161.G. Grappe, La Vie et l’œuvre de J.-H. Fragonard, Paris, 1929, pl. XVIII. S. de Ricci, Collection Albert Meyer, Paris, 1935, no. 24, ill.A.M. Frankfurter, ‘Drawings by French masters: The Albert Meyer Collection’, The Art News, XXXIV, no. 19, 8 February 1936, p. 12.H. Algoud, Fragonard, Monaco, 1941, pl. 81. G. Grappe, La Vie de Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Paris, 1942, pl. XIV. J. Villain, Fragonard, Paris, 1953, pl. 23. L. Re´au, Fragonard. Sa vie et son œuvre, Brussels, 1956, p. 196. A. Ananoff, L’Œuvre dessine´ de Jean-Honore´ Fragonard, IV, Paris, 1970, no. 2003, 2004, fig. 550.P. Rosenberg et I. Compin, ‘Quatre nouveaux Fragonard au Louvre (II)’, Revue du Louvre et des musées de France, XXIV, 1974, nos. 4-5, pp. 272, 275-276, fig. 13.I. Compin and P. Rosenberg, Tableaux de Fragonard et meubles de Cressent au Musée du Louvre, exhib. cat., Paris, Musée du Louvre, 1974, under no. 22 J.-P. Cuzin, Jean-Honoré Fragonard. Vie et œuvre. Catalogue complet des peintures, Fribourg, 1987, p. 179. P. Rosenberg, Fragonard, exhib. cat., Paris, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, and New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1987-1988, p. 481, fig. 3, under no. 236. M. Schieder, in The Age of Watteau, Chardin and Fragonard. Masterpieces of French Genre Painting, exhib. cat., Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada, Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, and Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, 2003-2004, p. 290, under nos. 83-84, ill. G. Faroult, Jean Honore´ Fragonard. Le Verrou, Paris, 2007, p. 30, fig. 18 [second edition Paris, 2015]. G. Faroult in Fragonard amoureux, galant et libertin, exhib. cat., Paris, Muse´e du Luxembourg, 2015-2016, pp. 208, 210, under nos. 71-72. M. A. Dupuy-Vachey, ‘Every Possible Combination. Between Inspiration and Finish in Fragonard’s Œuvre’, in Fragonard. Drawing Triumphant. Works from New York Collections, exhib. cat., New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016-2017, p. 25, fig. 19. G. Faroult, L’Amour peintre. L’Imagerie érotique en France au XVIIIe siècle, Paris, 2020, p. 411-412, 414, fig. 240. 展览 ?Paris, École des Beaux-Arts, Catalogue des dessins de l’école moderne exposés à l’École Nationale des Beaux-Arts au profit de la caisse de secours de l’association [Taylor], 1884, no. 276. Paris, Jacques Seligmann & Fils, Exposition de dessins de Fragonard, 1931, no. 19.?New York, Seligmann, Rey & Co., [French and Italian drawings from the collection of Albert Meyer], 1936 (see Frankfurter, op. cit.). ---------------------以下为软件翻译，仅供参考---------------------