Fanfan

Jean Honoré Fragonard

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Fragonard excelled at portraying small children in images that capture their innocence and playfulness. Here, a charmingly disheveled child with blond curls rushes forward clutching his dolls while two tiny dogs try to pull one from his grasp. Using a wide range of marks, from hatching to wiggles to dots, Fragonard contrasts the sunlit paleness of the boy with a shadowy background. Although the model has not survived, other prints made in 1778 by the artist suggest that this etching is based on a brown wash drawing, in reverse direction and probably of larger dimensions than the print. His pupil, and sister-in-law, Marguerite Gérard also made an etching after the same model.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art