Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Portrait of Jean Honoré Fragonard
Jacques Antoine Marie Lemoine French
Not on view
This portrait of Fragonard at the age of sixty-five came to light only recently. Drawn in July 1797 and exhibited in the Salon of the following year, it is done in a dark chalk technique (reminiscent of mezzotint engravings) that became popular in the last decade of the eighteenth century. Fragonard’s sympathetic and intelligent face shows the effects of the passage of time. He holds to his heart a porte-crayon, a drawing instrument with black and white chalk—a poignant expression of his legacy as a draftsman.
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