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This small painting on paper is among the few surviving oil sketches by Fragonard that plausibly could have been painted in the open air. It illuminates a little-known aspect of his practice as landscapist.
In the mid-eighteenth century the custom of drawing outdoors was an established part of a young artist's training. Fragonard produced spectacular series of landscape drawings during his early sojourn in Italy from 1756 to 1761, when he was a pensioner at the Académie de France in Rome. He continued to draw from nature throughout his career. Making open-air studies in oils, however, was still relatively unusual during this period.
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