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Study of Plants, Including Acanthus
Jean Honoré Fragonard French
Not on view
In 1759, when he likely made this drawing, Fragonard was a third-year pensionnaire (student) at the Académie de France in Rome. The director, Charles Joseph Natoire, regularly took the pupils on excursions in the Roman countryside in order to sketch en plein air. This work belongs to a series of large-scale formal studies of plants that Fragonard produced on such expeditions. The drawing demonstrates the artist’s talent for mise-en-page (placement on the sheet) and his command of the red-chalk technique. He uses delicate, precise lines to describe the leaves in the foreground and more abstract sketching to refer to the tree trunks in the background.
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