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Jean Honoré Fragonard French
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 631
Eighteenth-century artists and collectors valued oil sketches, believing that they attested to painters’ first ideas and their physical presence in each work of art. This finished painting engages with that new aesthetic. Fragonard’s sketch has energetic brushstrokes of varying thickness that capture sunlight as it lands at the center of the canvas along the woman’s cap, powdered face, flowers, dress, and bedraggled dog. This is not a portrait, but a genre scene that implies a narrative that continues outside the frame through a letter accompanied by a bouquet. The simple conceit of love letters had been popular in the previous century with Johannes Vermeer and his contemporaries.
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Artwork Details
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Title: The Love Letter
Artist: Jean Honoré Fragonard (French, Grasse 1732–1806 Paris)
Date: early 1770s
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 32 3/4 x 26 3/8 in. (83.2 x 67 cm)
Classification: Paintings
Credit Line: The Jules Bache Collection, 1949
Accession Number: 49.7.49
Learn more about this artwork
Connections: Smile
Art historian Kathy Galitz on the meaning behind the smile.
Connections: Date Night
Editorial assistant Nadja Hansen expounds on why the Met is a great place for a date.
Timeline of Art History
Essay
Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806)
Chronology
France, 1600-1800 A.D.
Museum Publications
One Met. Many Worlds.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vol. 7, Europe in the Age of Enlightenment and Revolution
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide (Spanish)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide (Russian)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide (Portuguese)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide (Korean)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide (Japanese)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide (Italian)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide (German)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide (French)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide (Chinese)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide (Arabic)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide
Masterpieces of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Masterpieces of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Masterpieces of Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art
French Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art from the Early Eighteenth Century through the Revolution
European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born before 1865: A Summary Catalogue
A Concise Catalogue of the European Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Related Artworks
- All Related Artworks
- In the same gallery
- By Jean Honoré Fragonard
- European Paintings
- Canvas
- Oil paint
- Paintings
- From Europe
- From France
- From A.D. 1600–1800
Imaginary View of a Roman Villa
Jean Honoré Fragonard (French, Grasse 1732–1806 Paris)
mid-1770s
L'Armoire
Jean Honoré Fragonard (French, Grasse 1732–1806 Paris)
1778
Le Serment d'Amour
After Jean Honoré Fragonard (French, Grasse 1732–1806 Paris)
n.d.
Danse de satyres
Jean Honoré Fragonard (French, Grasse 1732–1806 Paris)
n.d.
The Vision of Saint Jerome
Jean Honoré Fragonard (French, Grasse 1732–1806 Paris)
1763–64
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European Paintings at The Met
The Met's celebrated European Paintings collection encompasses more than 2,500 works of art from the thirteenth through the early twentieth century.
