Sketchbook from the First Italian Period, c. 1759–61

Marbled paper–covered boards and black leather spine;
thirty-four pages of off-white antique laid paper
16 x 24 cm
Louise Haskell Daly Fund
1968.42

This is one of only two known sketchbooks by Jean-Honoré Fragonard. It was produced during the artist's first journey to Italy (1756–61), with Jean-Claude Richard, abbé de Saint-Non. The other sketchbook, now in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, was used during Fragonard's second voyage to Italy (1773–74), a trip that also encompassed parts of northern and eastern Europe. Despite their rarity and the unique insight they provide into Fragonard's artistic process, neither of these two crucial volumes has been fully published, and both have often been omitted from pivotal studies of the artist's works.(1)Only Eunice Williams has fully integrated the Fogg sketchbook into the artist's chronology. See Williams, Drawings by Fragonard in North American Collections, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art (Washington, 1978): cat. no. 15.

Both sketchbooks remained in the artist's family for several generations before they were sold, but unlike the Harvard sketchbook, the Amsterdam volume stayed intact. The sketchbook that now belongs to the Fogg Art Museum originally contained fifty sheets. It was disassembled in the mid-twentieth century and the pages were sold separately. In 1968 the Fogg was able to acquire thirty pages, and the sketchbook was reconstituted in its present order based on the observations of then curator Agnes Mongan and paper conservator Marjorie Cohn. Although the original pagination is interrupted by the missing folios, which have not all been traced, the reconstructed volume provides an appropriate framework for viewing the summary modes of drawing so often found in works of this type.

The sketchbook as reconstituted contains fifteen figural or anatomical drawings, nine landscapes or nature studies, and seventeen studies for a composition, in black chalk or graphite, red chalk, black ink, and combinations of red and black chalk and brown wash and red chalk wash. None of the studies in either of Fragonard's sketchbooks can be linked to any of his known finished works, and the haphazard approach to drawing evident in both the Fogg and the Amsterdam volumes—where images appear in all possible orientations—implies that he may not have used his sketchbooks in any systematic manner.

After examining the drawings in the Fogg sketchbook, one is immediately struck by Fragonard's fascination with a particular composition, which recurs frequently in either black chalk or black ink. A large part of Fragonard’s time during his first journey to Italy was spent making copies after famous paintings, many of which are now in the British Museum in London. Fragonard's repeated composition does not appear to be a copy of any known work by another artist.(2)Pierre Rosenberg and Barbara Brejon de Lavergnée, Saint-Non, Fragonard: Panopticon Italiano, Un diario di viaggio ritrovato, 1759–61 (Rome, 2000; 2nd ed.). Instead, its dynamic and undoubtedly original design for what may depict the martyrdom of a saint reflects his esteem for the works of the many baroque artists he had encountered for the first time. These studies are the most accomplished drawings in the sketchbook, and they reveal Fragonard’s early tendency toward compositions filled with the rhythmic whirl of weightless figures that evolve into an explosion of narrative force. Pietro da Cortona (1596–1669) has been mentioned as a possible influence; while this is undeniable, the spatial complexity of these studies, as well as the large number of their curiously interwoven figures, suggest that the works of Luca Giordano and Tintoretto may also be significant compositional sources. The traditional date span for this volume encompasses the entire six years of the first Italian sojourn, but as Fragonard and his companions did not visit Naples and the Veneto—where they would have encountered the largest number of works by these two artists—until the end of 1759 through July of 1761, one might cautiously date the sketchbook to the end of Fragonard’s journey.

1. Only Eunice Williams has fully integrated the Fogg sketchbook into the artist's chronology. See Williams, Drawings by Fragonard in North American Collections, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art (Washington, 1978): cat. no. 15.

2. Pierre Rosenberg and Barbara Brejon de Lavergnée, Saint-Non, Fragonard: Panopticon Italiano, Un diario di viaggio ritrovato, 1759–61 (Rome, 2000; 2nd ed.).