01 painting, The amorous game, Jean-Honoré Fragonard's The Fountain of Love, With Footnotes #83

Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732 - 1806)

La fontaine d'amour (The Fountain of Love), c. 1785

Oil on canvas

63.5 x 50.7 cm

The Wallace Collection

The scene depicts love as a natural force and uncontrollable passion, stronger than the people affected by it. This perception of love was still recent around 1785 when Fragonard painted the two versions. While the image of a fountain of love was known, e. g. from Aristotle, the image is Fragonard's pictorial invention without a direct literary source. More on this painting

Embodying the freedom and curiosity of the French Enlightenment, Jean Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806) developed an exuberant and fluid manner as a painter, draftsman, and printmaker. Prolific and inventive, he abandoned early on the conventional career path dictated by the hierarchical structure of the Royal Academy, working largely for private patrons. His work constitutes a further elaboration of the Rococo idiom established by Antoine Watteau and François Boucher, a manner perfectly suited to his subjects, which favored the playful, the erotic, and the joys of domesticity. More on Jean Honoré Fragonard

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