The Girl with the Marmot by Fragonard Round Cushion

The Girl with the Marmot by Jean-Honoré Fragonard (undated) is a vivacious ink and watercolor portrait drawing on paper of a young girl gazing confidently at the viewer, arms akimbo. Beside her is a marmot peeking out of a small box, the marmot being a type of large, European ground squirrel that the subject keeps as a pet. Fragonard’s brush deftly captures the warmth and humanity of the portrait subject, a rich range of colour and light and dark tonalities, and the easygoing, relaxed approach to life in 18th century France. Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806) was a late Rococo painter of the French Ancien Régime whose works were distinguished by painterly facility and exuberance. Originally a pupil of Chardin, Fragonard produced a large number of works until the growing fashion of neo-classicism and the French Revolution forced him to flee into obscurity. Fragonard’s reputation revived in the late 19th century, when his sense of colour, relaxed hedonistic subject matter and painterly brushwork inspired new generations of the Impressionists such as Renoir.