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The Pasha Receiving in His Harem
Jean Honoré Fragonard French
Not on view
The swift shorthand of this drawing identifies it as a rare première pensée (first idea), an initial sketch that records the urgency of the artist putting his thoughts down on paper. In the tangle of lines we discern a sultan seated on a sofa, while another man presents two young women. In eighteenth-century France, Ottoman subjects (referred to as turquerie) enjoyed great popularity, Fragonard would have encountered them in the form of novels and theatrical productions.
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