Jean-Honoré FRAGONARD:The Vision of Saint Jerome - 1763/1764
SOLD
Etching, 165 x 115 mm. Baudicour 21, 2nd state (of 2) with the number 8 bottom right; Wildenstein XIV.
Fine impression on laid paper. In good condition. On the back of the sheet, some annotations in pencil and very small thin areas on the reverse along the right and left border of the sheet. Thread margins all around the platemark (sheet: 172 x 118 mm).
Provenance: Jules Michelin (1817-1870), painter and printmaker. His collection mark printed verso (Lugt 1490).
Fragonard etched The Vision of Saint Jerome around 1763/1764, upon his return to France after a long stay in Italy between 1756 and 1761. The etching is a copy in reverse of an altarpiece, painted in oil by Johann Liss in the church of San Nicolò da Tolentino in Venice.
Fragonard produced very few etchings, but his works show freedom as well as mastery within the technique, and are animated with what Prosper de Baudicour calls “an extremely witty point”. Rena Hoisington emphasizes Fragonard’s liveliness, especially in La Vision de Saint Jérôme: « Fragonard’s etching vibrates with his characteristic energy; it is a symphony of marks that rewards close scrutiny. […] In The Vision of Saint Jerome, the dense massing of lines at lower right denotes the lion’s ample mane and the shadows that engulf his head, whereas the squiggles isolated against the white of the paper above evoke the luminosity of the cloud-filled sky and the intensity of the saint’s vision. Fragonard also tweaked various details of Liss’s composition, showing one of the angels at upper left turning to smile at the viewer, making eye-contact. » (Rena M. Hoisington: Aquatint - From Its Origins to Goya, 2021, p. 69).