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Fragonard repeated the compositions of the two small pendants known as Love as Folly, and Love the Sentinel numerous times during his career, two pairs are in the National Gallery of Art in Washington. The various versions of the compositions are usually dated to the early 1770s on the basis of style. Their light colour scheme, rapid brushwork, and lighthearted subjects are similar to numerous paintings, often in oval format, that Fragonard produced in the years around 1770. During this period he was at work on his most celebrated cycle of decorative paintings, the large canvases called the Progress of Love, painted around 1771-72 at the request of Madame du Barry for her pleasure pavilion at Louveciennes outside Paris and now in the Frick Collection, New York. The present works related closely to two of four overdoors associated with this commission.
These compositions and their variants typify the kind of quickly painted, small-scale decorative pictures that Fragonard frequently produced during his career.
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