Detail of The Love Letter by Fragonard in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, January 2022

Title: The Love Letter

Artist: Jean Honoré Fragonard (French, Grasse 1732–1806 Paris)

Date: early 1770s

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 32 3/4 x 26 3/8 in. (83.2 x 67 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: The Jules Bache Collection, 1949

Accession Number: 49.7.49


Finish is a relative term in Fragonard’s paintings. Here, over a brown tone, Fragonard seems to sketch with the tip of his brush energetic strokes of varying thickness that capture sunlight that lands at the center of the canvas, along the woman’s cap, powdered face, flowers, dress, and dog. This painting should not be read as a portrait, but as a genre scene that takes up a key eighteenth-century theme, the love letter, in which the appreciation of the work is as much about how Fragonard paints as what he depicts.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436322