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| The Two Sisters |
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| Painting in frame: overall |
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| Painting in frame: corner |
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| Painting in frame: angled corner |
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| Profile drawing of frame. W 5 3/8 in. 13.6 cm (T. Newbery) |
Artist:Jean Honoré Fragonard (French, Grasse 1732–1806 Paris)
Date:ca. 1769–70
Medium:Oil on canvas
Dimensions:28 1/4 x 22 in. (71.8 x 55.9 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Gift of Julia A. Berwind, 1953
This picture must date to the late 1760s and was engraved with the title "Les Jeunes Soeurs" or "The Young Sisters." While we do not know who the girls were, we do know—from the evidence of an oil sketch and a copy in pastels, as well as from the engraving—that the canvas has been cut down. Originally, Fragonard showed the older girl at full-length and the younger one seated on a wheeled wooden horse in an elegant interior.
Catalogue Entry
The painting is first recorded in 1785, in the Paris estate sale of the Marquis de Véri, where it is described as showing two little girls playing games suitable to their age, the younger riding a papier-mâché horse on wheels, and her sister holding on to her while pushing the vehicle. The canvas was originally about twice the size it is now: the entire composition is recorded in an undated engraving by Gérard Vidal (1742–1801) titled Les Jeunes Soeurs (The Young Sisters). A signed and dated pastel copy (The Met, 1977.383) of 1770 by Jean-Baptiste Claude Richard, Abbé de Saint-Non (1727–1791), Fragonard’s patron and friend, shows the figure group complete and a great part of the columned hall in the background. The style of the picture suggests that it was painted shortly before this pastel.
Typically, the girls wear up-to-date adult dresses in soft pastel colors. Their blond hair is tied back in ringlets. The toy horse has a salmon-colored lead rein and saddle blanket, and bows of the same color tied to his harness. Saint-Non’s pastel shows that originally a large Polichinelle doll in a pointed hat with reddened cheeks, lips, and eye sockets rested on the horse’s wheeled platform. The painting could have been a double portrait or, more likely, a scene of children at play, a genre that had been favored especially in the 1730s by Jean Siméon Chardin (1699–1769). If a portrait, the identification of the children as Fragonard’s daughter Rosalie (b. 1769) and his sister-in-law Marguerite Gérard (b. 1761) is ruled out by their respective birth dates.
It was perhaps thought that the awkward effect of the finished picture—the alignment of the animal’s head, the small girl’s knees, and the older girl’s bustle—would be mitigated by cutting the canvas down, which occurred sometime before 1916, when this work appeared on the art market. There is a loosely painted preliminary sketch (Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon) that suffers from the same awkwardness.
Katharine Baetjer 2011
Copyright Image
https://images.metmuseum.org
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