Whether you know it or not, you’ve probably seen Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s work. His painting, “The Swing,” even makes a cameo in Disney’s “Frozen” (2013). Amidst pre-French-Revolution tensions, the French court painter built a career depicting hedonism, eroticism, and extravagance.
Purchased by Henry Clay Frick for his famed Fragonard room, Fragonard’s “Progress of Love” series illustrates romance in the pastoral. The first painting in the series, “The Pursuit,” shows a group of young women enjoying their afternoon in the park. The trees loom large above the ladies, who are only a minute fragment of a larger scene. Water streams behind them from stone sculptures of angels. Roses invade their spotlight. The central figure’s dress shines brighter than her face — the story is yet to begin.
In the next painting, “The Meeting,” a suitor climbs from a ladder to pursue a woman covered in white cloth. The woman looks away from the man, and her figure is whiter than snow. Swathed in red, the suitor represents desire, while the lady embodies purity. She looks away — maybe she is passive in his pursuit of love. But she outstretches her arm to grab his. The two are complicit in the arrangement. The final two paintings, “The Meeting,” (yes, there’s another painting with the same title) and “Love Letters,” depict the couple as the central focus: Cupid has completed his job and can now rest.
The series is a playfully erotic testament to the period’s cultural consciousness. Except it isn’t. Rather, it was an unsuccessful homage to a rapidly dying period. Fragonard’s commissioner, Madame du Barry, rejected the series for Joseph Marie Vien’s popular Neoclassic style. Fragonard would install the paintings in his godfather’s villa. The paintings were purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan and later acquired by Henry Clay Frick in 1914. He installed the paintings in his private New York City residence and after Frick died in 1919, his daughter Helen commissioned a lesser-known artist, Walter Gay, to depict the room. The resulting product is “The Fragonard Room,” a brightly painted mimesis of Fragonard’s “Progress of Love” paintings.
Gay’s interpretation, however, breathes a life of its own. The careful, soft trees pushed into the background of Fragonard’s pastoral playfulness become heavy swatches of blue-green, popping into Gay’s foreground. The intensity of Gay’s blue strikes the eye first before the golden, glittering room or amorous couple whispering to each other. The “Progress of Love” paintings transform into large brushstrokes of colors, impressionistically pressed onto the canvas. This love between the couple feels different — it’s rushed, without Fragonard’s exuberant allure. The room shines, but it can only do so for a second.
The painting was completed in 1926, three years before the Great Depression swept across the United States. Like Fragonard’s original paintings, “The Fragonard Room” is a relic of the Roaring Twenties — an extravagant era concerned with booming consumerism. The period was a peak before a swift decline, perhaps preemptively expressed through Gay’s sweeping strokes. The viewer’s eyes trail the primary colors, from red to blue to yellow. Between the dynamic brushstrokes, crystal chandelier, detailed wooden floor, and upholstered cushions, each subject competes for dominance. Even the door, swathed in green and red, fights for the viewer’s attention.
The final product forms an image that, while successfully reflecting Frick’s walls, loses the essence of the original “The Progress of Love” series. In physical reality, Frick’s setting adds to the playful ambiance of Fragonard’s work. However, in Gay’s mimesis, the opulence of oversaturated hues distracts the progress of love from ever occurring. But, that’s precisely the point. “The Fragonard Room” is a snapshot of Fragonard’s — and Frick’s — hedonistic extravagance that Gay invites us to walk into, if only just for a step.
