Les trois Grâces

5 April 1732

Born

c. 1749

Pupil of Chardin, then of Boucher's studio

Boucher, noticing the young man's inclination toward art, recommended him to Chardin's atelier; after a short period of study there, around 1749 Fragonard returned to Boucher and absorbed his style so thoroughly that the master entrusted him with executing replicas of his paintings.

December 1756

Departure for the French Academy in Rome

He left for the French Academy in Rome, then directed by Charles-Joseph Natoire, in the company of his friend Hubert Robert and the architect Victor Louis. His early Italian works show the influence of Tiepolo and the Baroque style of Pietro da Cortona.

1765

"Coresus and Callirhoe" at the Salon: admission to the Academy

He exhibited at the Paris Salon the painting "Coresus and Callirhoe" (now in the Louvre), for which the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture admitted him as a member. Diderot devoted a lavish panegyric to it, and the king bought the painting and ordered it reproduced at the Gobelins manufactory.

second half of the 1760s

Abandoning history painting for "gallant scenes"

Despairing of attaining the position of first painter in the classical genre, he abandoned it for erotic genre scenes, which enjoyed the greatest success at the court of Louis XV. He soon became a fashionable artist — a master of pastoral landscapes, female portraits and small-format "cabinet pictures."

c. 1790

Flight from revolutionary Paris to Grasse

The Revolution deprived Fragonard of his private patrons — executed or exiled — and ruined him. He judged it prudent to leave Paris (in 1790 by some accounts, in 1793 by others) and found refuge in Grasse with his cousin Alexandre Maubert, whose house he decorated with the panel series "The Progress of Love," originally painted for Madame du Barry's château.