Ad Blankestijn: The Swing by Fragonard (1767)

The Swing by Fragonard depicts an elegantly dressed young woman on a swing. The young woman is illuminated by the soft light coming from above, and the trees form an oval frame around her. She is wearing a shepherdess's hat, and as she flies through the air on the swing, she seems to give in to frivolous abandon, her slipper flying off her left foot in the heat of the moment and hanging in the air. The slipper provides a visual focus in the splash of sunlight that falls on it, emphasizing the erotic qualities of this painting. A smiling young man, hidden in the lush bushes below and to the left, extends one arm (hat in hand) toward her billowing dress, his other arm keeping him balanced. Apparently, he is peering up her skirt - what modern viewers may not know is that 18th-century women did not wear underpants, a custom that did not emerge until the 19th century (the same situation existed in Japan, where women - including geisha - never used underwear until later in the 20th century). A smiling older man, almost hidden in the shadows on the right, is driving the swing with a pair of ropes. We also see two statues: one of Cupid watching the young man on the left from above with his finger in front of his lips (as if guarding an amorous secret), the other of two cherubs (putti) on the left beside the older man.

[The Swing by Fragonard (1767)]

What are we seeing?

This naughty painting dates from the heady Rococo decades just before the French Revolution, when aristocrats (who would soon lose their heads) engaged in the frivolous games so aptly described in a novel such as Dangerous Liaisons by Choderlos de Laclos.

According to the memoirs of the playwright Charles Collé, the notorious French libertine Baron de St. Julien asked Gabriel François Doyen to paint him and his mistress. He wanted to be painted peeping at his mistress's legs as she sat on a swing and was being pushed by a bishop. Doyen, not comfortable with this frivolous arrangement, refused and passed the commission on to Fragonard. Fragonard dropped the perverse desire for a bishop and instead painted an older man, apparently the (cuckolded?) husband of the lady on the swing. The husband plays a subordinate role, almost hidden in shadow, while the peeping baron is illuminated under the lady's dress. Fragonard used a delicate pastel palette of frothy creams, juicy pinks, and minty greens. The result is the most iconic work of the French Rococo period.

The painting is in the Wallace Collection in London. It is considered Fragonard's most famous work.

Speaking of falling heads, one of the first owners of The Swing actually died on the guillotine in 1794. The work was then confiscated by the revolutionary government. It may have belonged to the Marquis des Razins de Saint-Marc and certainly to the Duc de Morny. After the latter's death in 1865, it was purchased at an auction in Paris by Lord Hertford, the principal founder of the Wallace Collection.

There are two notable copies, neither by Fragonard: one, once owned by Edmond James de Rothschild, depicts the woman in a blue dress; the other, a smaller version (56 × 46 cm), belonged to Duke Jules de Polignac. This painting passed into the possession of the Grimaldi family in 1930 and was donated to the City of Versailles in 1966, where it is currently exhibited in the Musée Lambinet. It has been attributed to Fragonard's workshop.

Rococo

The style period Rococo reached its peak between 1730 and 1760. The name is derived from the French word rocaille, an asymmetrical shell motif that was widely used in the 18th-century Baroque, especially in applied art.

The style emerged in France and Italy as a reaction to the strict classicist Baroque of around 1700. The subsequent rococo style, ushered in by the Regency, embodied a refined sense of the arts in a society that valued elegance, artifice and light-hearted wit.

Highlights of this style period include the airy painted scenes of Watteau, Fragonard, Boucher and Tiepolo, the exuberant South German rococo churches, some very richly decorated palaces in France, Germany and Austria (some with rococo gardens) and the elegant French furniture, clocks, tableware and silverware from this period.

[The Lock, by Fragonard]

Fragonard

The French painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806) came to Paris with his parents in 1738, where he was apprenticed in the late 1740s, first to Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin and then (from 1749) to François Boucher. He stayed in Rome from 1756 to 1761 and in Naples in 1761. He also visited the northern Netherlands twice. In 1773, he traveled to Italy with his patron Bergeret de Grandcourt, a journey Fragonard recorded in several drawings. Fragonard married the miniaturist Marie-Anne Gérard in 1769. Their son also became a painter.

[The Secret Meeting by Fragonard (1771), Frick Collection, New York]

Fragonard's use of eroticism in his work has much in common with that of Boucher, but his style and use of color are strongly influenced by Peter Paul Rubens. Fragonard's paintings are overflowing with shades of cream and pink, but are clearly more than light entertainment. Obsessed with light and color, Fragonard sought to capture the flicker and movement of light on the surface of fabrics and objects. He developed a style that anticipated the Impressionism of the 19th century.

Portrait of a Lady

In 1920, influenced by Fragonard's The Swing, William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) wrote the poem "Portrait of a Lady".

Your thighs are appletrees
whose blossoms touch the sky.
Which sky? The sky
where Watteau hung a lady's
slipper. Your knees
are a southern breeze -- or
a gust of snow. Agh! what
sort of man was Fragonard?
-- As if that answered
anything. -- Ah, yes. Below
the knees, since the tune
drops that way, it is
one of those white summer days,
the tall grass of your ankles
flickers upon the shore --
Which shore? --
the sand clings to my lips --
Which shore?
Agh, petals maybe. How
should I know?
Which shore? Which shore?
-- the petals from some hidden
appletree -- Which shore?
I said petals from an appletree.

Like the painting, this is a very erotic poem. Although it is called a "portrait," only the lower parts of the lady's body are shown. The speaker begins at the subject's thighs and works his way down the body, describing the knees and ankles as he observes them. He completely ignores the subject's face, although this is supposed to be a "portrait." . When the speaker asks, "What / sort of man was Fragonard," he implies an interest in the Frenchman's sexual preferences, perhaps wondering if Fragonard was a voyeur. This poem also has possible sexual overtones in that it speaks of blossoming apple trees and sand "clinging to [the speaker's] lips" in the context of the body parts described. Growth and blossoming often symbolize fertility in the context of spring, and all of these play a role in the description of the woman's legs. Therefore, the description of only the legs feels very intentional, as feet and thighs are often sexualized.

[William Carlos Williams by Man Ray (1924)]

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) was one of the great representatives of American modernism, participating in the movements of Imagism, of which he was a founding member, as a friend of Ezra Pound. Williams also worked as a pediatrician and general practitioner, practicing medicine by day and writing by night.

Despite his primary occupation as a family doctor, Williams had a successful literary career as a poet. His work has a great affinity with painting, as in the poem quoted here, "Portrait of a Lady," with its reference to a painting by the 18th-century French artist Fragonard.

[Incorporates some translated and edited texts from the English, Dutch, and French Wikipedia articles on this subject]