FRAGONARD, Jean-Honoré
(b. 1732, Grasse, d. 1806, Paris)

The Progress of Love: The Meeting

1773
Oil on canvas, 318 x 244 cm
Frick Collection, New York

Madame du Barry commissioned Fragonard to do four panels for her salon at Louveciennes and he produced the delightful sentimental comedy of The Progress of Love, a kind of return to Watteau. But the year was already 1773 and the panels were criticised in a pamphlet that described them as "daubs." So Madame du Barry send them back and turned instead to Vien. Fragonard was no longer fashionable.