Personal Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Jean Honoré Fragonard
French; 18th-century
New York, NY: Metropolitan Museum of Art
85%
The Love Letter. c1770. Oil on canvas
This painting is a confection, but one whose sweetness seems justified by the unassuming crystallinity of its sugars' structure, if by nothing else. Fragonard was a master of juxtapositions that don't seem to be so until they explode into view, which is to say that this picture looks frivolously fast and instrumental until you notice how the swathe of wall behind the sitter sets off a play of strokes that comprises her garment, or how the sturdy greens of desk and cushion lock tightly into place a melting blue wedge of body. A crossbeam under her bench echoes the slow jut into substance of the corner of her desk; a thin slip of couch at the lower right edge serves slyly as a repoussoir. (2023)